


Play of Spirits

by reminiscence



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Frontier
Genre: Gen, Season Rewrite, alternate history! AU, ffn challenge: AU set boot camp, ffn challenge: chapter set boot camp, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, ffn challenge: endurance challenge, ffn challenge: epic masterclass challenge, ffn challenge: season rewrite challenge, ffn challenge: the new year's long aul, word count: over 100000 words
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 74,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9132313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: The angels seek the key to their fate and the humans are the pawns, but all of them are only willing to sacrifice so much. The kids are just lucky there’s a vested interest in their survival…up to a certain point. But by that point, they’re not going to sacrifice each other and that’s where the angels’ plan might fall apart…or actually succeed.





	1. Call for Players

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the
> 
> Diversity Section L, L17 – write a chapter a week until you complete 100k  
> Epic Masterclass Challenge, #3 – remix tapes  
> Chapter Set Boot Camp, #008 – 53 chapters  
> AU Set Boot Camp, #036 - alternate/transposed history! AU (eg. something before canon is changed). So the story behind the Three Angels and Lucemon is quite a bit different to the original canon.  
> The New Year’s Long Haul  
> Season Rewrite Competition  
> The Endurance Challenge
> 
> And interestingly, the 53 chapters is actually 52 chapters and a special/epilogue. And since there’s 52 weeks in a year, I’m hoping I can start posting from January 1 2017 and post the final chapter December 31 2017, and then the special on January 1 2018 to wrap things up (though this time, it won't be along with the new year fireworks in Melbourne :D). Though that means actually posting once every seven days so we’ll see how that goes. Wish me luck and enjoy!

The flowers looked fake: colourful and altogether bright but they smelt of water mostly: fresh rain that dotted the grass and he wandered on the lawn after the spring shower. He’d expected the entire place to smell like perfume so he was kind of glad it didn’t. Maybe this wouldn’t be as awkward as he’d envisioned it being after all.

But there was a young girl at the counter and that promised to be an awkward encounter. To make it worse, she spotted him right away. It helped that there was one of those wind chimes on the door and no other customers.

Too bad it was already too late to reconsider. She rounded the island and came up to him. ‘Hi. What’s your name?’

                ‘Minamoto Kouji,’ Kouji muttered, pretending to be looking for what he wanted and then giving it up as a bad job straight away. There were little cards beneath each vase but he’d never heard of half the flowers there and their colours were so bright, he couldn’t imagine how they’d all go together into a bouquet.

                ‘I’m Hanako.’ She smiled at him and he wondered if she was the sort of person to smile at every little thing, or she’d perfected the fake smile for her role as a salesperson. Well, it didn’t really matter to him. He was just there to buy flowers after all and it was a onetime thing. He was actually pretty good at keeping his temper and not toing over any lines but he’d done exactly that and today was a better day than most to make amends for that.

Even if a part of him balked at the idea of apologising.

Even though another part of him knew she wasn’t the one to blame.

He sighed. Hanako-san was still looking at him. ‘What sort of flowers are you looking for?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I’m not a flower person.’

                ‘No,’ she agreed, smiling again. ‘Definitely not. You look far more straightforward: the sort of person who’d normally let their mouth and their bodies do the talking for them – and yet, there are some things you can’t say so frankly… or flowers make good presents. Am I wrong?’

                ‘You’re right.’ And he was mildly surprised at her insight as well – though the comment towards his body made her wonder just how closely she’d been looking at him. But all she did was smile again and wander a little further away. Giving him some space, and personal space was a commodity in japan but far easier in a double story home with three people and a dog that was probably too hyper-active for its age. ‘It’s…an apology and an anniversary present.’

                ‘How nice,’ the woman hummed. ‘Anniversary, huh. How long have your parents been married for?’

Small talk, and asking personal questions to boot but this one didn’t really matter, he supposed. ‘Three years,’ he replied, and ignored the look of surprise on her face. After all, he was far older than three years. But it wasn’t her business as to why.

                ‘I see,’ said the woman, after a pause and she drifted further down the aisle, selecting flowers from the vases.

Kouji wondered if she really did see, but that didn’t really matter either. As long as the bouquet she put together was presentable and reasonably priced –

                ‘You know,’ Hanako-san said, ‘that flowers are just another way to communicate with people.’ When Kouji hummed non-committedly, she gestured. ‘Come here. Which of these do you prefer?’

Hanako-san had already collected sunflowers and some sort of daisy and was now gesturing at two different white flowers. Zephyranth said the label on one, and white poppies the other. They looked pretty similar to someone like him who had no interest in flowers but he’d never even heard of zephyranths before. Poppies at least he knew.

He pointed them and the woman smiled. ‘White poppies mean dormant affection,’ she explained, ‘as opposed to the zephyranths which represent _gentle_ affection – gentle but active, I mean. Now, how about these?’

She gestured at two different flowers: one bunch which varied from white with purple stripes to almost entirely purple, and the others little purple bulbs collating on a stem. The latter ones looked a little ridiculous, in his opinion. Fine as a climbing plant, maybe, in some corner of the house, but hardly bouquet material. But if they were fresh, they probably were bouquet material. The others he could at least make sense of and he pointed at them and the woman laughed. ‘They actually mean the same thing,’ she said. ‘Mallows and purple hycanthias. At least in this context. Words can mean different things in different contexts, after all.’ She picked a few and shuffled them with the rest. ‘Maybe some asters too… Did you want a vase?’

                ‘No thanks.’ He left her to go ahead. She hadn’t explained what the flowers had actually meant, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. He didn’t know much about flowers and he doubted Satomi-san did either. His father usually got her roses. Simple red roses and everybody knew what they meant. So it didn’t really matter what flowers Hanako-san put together, just as long as they looked decent and their meaning couldn’t be mistaken for something it wasn’t.

It really was a peace offering and nothing more. And when she called him over to the counter and he took out his wallet, it became even less. Because with the wallet came his mobile phone, and with the phone came a message.

_Minamoto Kouji…_

And then another one, almost immediately.

_Are you willing to play this game?_

.

Her eyes burned as she sent the first of the messages off. They were the hardest ones, appealing to thousands individually but the ones after were far simpler: the same message sent through every one of those message streams and she didn’t need to pay attention to what went where. They needed no guidance than the road she’d already drafted for them.

They only needed to go now, and be read, and obeyed.

The calling that would summon all those children to this world… And, hopefully, amongst them would be the ones to save it.

.

It was far too easy to leave the flowers behind. He barely thought of them and that was fine because he’d thought so hard to even get to that point: struggled so and he fell away as soon as something else came along. Because that message was strange and he didn’t reasonably know why he was even following it but he wanted to. It was a door in which he wouldn’t have to try like he did in reality, because that was what games were. Or weren’t. They weren’t reality. And only the blind let them take the place of those realities – but there was something in games that called the majority of people there.

He didn’t consider himself an avid gamer for the most part, but the idea of being able to jump into an avatar still appealed to him. After all, he could follow the mould of the game and attain victory or mess around and lose, and the losses affected no-one in the end. Not unless he was playing in some competition and he didn’t care to do such things. Some people did. Some people built their entire lives around games but if he was going to build his life around anything, it would be something he could never let go of –

And, really, that was why it was so difficult to deal with Satomi-san, because she was taking the place of someone else and that was someone he could never replace in his heart.

The buildings flashed by him now, or rather _he_ flashed by them, on the train. It was packed with kids his age which was unusual at that point in the afternoon. Typically, they were already home or in cram school for another hour and yet they spilled over the seats and near the doors and there were even some interspersed between the adults. And it wasn’t even a special day for most of them. No festival or holiday or any big event or sale he knew of. And yet there had to be a reason for all of them and the likelihood of those reasons having nothing to do with each dropped with the more people there were.

The kid across from him was staring at his phone. He pulled his own phone out. The string of messages were still there. Asking him to play. Guiding him into the train… A new message appeared as he stared.

_Get off at Shibuya station._

And there was a chorus of beeps and tones that made him wonder if they weren’t all receiving the same sort of message. And it was only one train, at that. He wasn’t sure if he was more or less curious now, but it did make him wonder. The message had been addressed to him after all. With _his_ name, not his father’s and the phone was registered under his father’s name. Spam and any advertisement he hadn’t signed up for himself would have picked up his father’s name, or gone with no name at all.

He frowned to himself as he looked at the overhead monitor. Shibuya station was still a few stops away and it would be a mess of a crowd if everyone was getting off there. He probably shouldn’t bother after all. There was no explanation; just instructions and for all he knew, it was leading them right into trouble. After all, which idiot followed instructions that came from no reputable source – or, indeed, any source they could see – just for the sake of curiosity?

Except there were a lot of kids with their noses practically pressed to their phone screens – except the kid across from him, who was grinning at him now.

He turned away and looked back at his screen – and then blinked. He could have sworn he heard his name… but no. There were people chatting, certainly, but no-one familiar and no-one looking directly at him except that kid and he was sure he’d never seen him before. After all, he’d remember a guy who wore goggles on his hat, if only because of how ridiculous it looked.

He looked back at his phone. No new messages. Not like he’d done what the old one said yet anyway. So long as it didn’t turn into a wild goose chase – and, really, what guarantee did he have that it wouldn’t?

 _What is this?_ He wrote.

 _You’ll find out_ , was the reply.

And that was it. No explanation. No endorsement. No form of encouragement as well.

But, really, what did he have to lose? Whittling away time was a good thing, considering what awaited him when he returned.

.

Almost none of them thought to send a reply. Almost none of them thought to ask or, if they did, they kept those questions in their minds where no-one else could hear them.

This boy though… He texted a reply.

It was a pity she couldn’t answer him. It was a pity she had no satisfactory answer… Or, at least, no answer that didn’t risk frightening him away instead or else was a blatant lie. Because she knew what she was doing. What she was risking. What she was wasting. All those children and they needed less than ten of them in total and yet they had to test all of them because there was no way to know…

But that boy… He texted a reply. No-one else did. No-one else thought too.

 _His eyes are bright,_ she thought. _Clearer than the others_.

Though she was glad so many were coming. More meant they had a higher chance of finding the right ones, ones that would fit the moulds that awaited them.

But still… That meant nothing, in the end. She didn’t choose the moulds and she couldn’t chance calling only the people she thought would fit into one of them. So ultimately it didn’t matter what she thought of one child over another. Not until they saw how well they fit into those moulds, anyway.

But still, she hoped. And watched. And it was the ones who acted differently from the masses that caught her.

So… the boy who’d texted a reply. She scanned the train again. Who else was there?

A child with goggles on their head when no-one else wore such an accessory.

And another child not even holding a phone but following the messages anyway. How curious.

.

Children flocked into Shibuya Station. To the elevators because the message specified that and so the stairs were empty.

_Take the elevator to the basement._

Though, if Kouji had found himself at the back of the crowd instead of near the middle, he might have tried the stairs anyway. He was stuck though. Wedged into the crowd and he despised that, but there was little he could do about it. He could only wait impatiently for the elevators, going up and down and carrying ten or twelve kids at a time and slowly thinning the crowd.

And to his annoyance, when he did make it into the elevator, the boy with the goggles was with him. The boy who’d been staring and trying to talk to him before. More successful in an enclosed space with less people now. Though he was, in truth, addressing all of them with his stupid question. ‘Are you guys here because of the message?’

There was a chorus of answers and he didn’t bother adding his own. They were all the same anyway. ‘Of course. ‘You too?’ ‘Don’t you look around, dumbass?’ And the likes.

He just turned away. Probably a bad move in his part because the guy jabbed him on the shoulder.

                ‘Don’t touch me,’ he snapped, cursing the fact that he couldn’t put any distance between them. He didn’t like strangers trying to get close. Those were the people who left marks and then vanished so those marks became ugly scabs that scarred – and he’d had more than enough of letting people into his life only to leave them or be left by them afterwards.

And really, an elevator in the middle of the station was a ridiculous place for a meet and greet.

He was relieved to find that, when the elevator dropped them off at the basement, it was with another message – and one that separated their paths.

_It’s up to you now. Which one will you choose?_

He watched the kids fan out. The one at the furthest seemed to have the least people on it, and probably for that exact reason and so he went there. No-one followed him, and the carriage he got into had no-one there either. A small miracle, considering the number of kids there’d been before. He could only imagine, with a grimace, what some of the other carriages might be looking like. Especially the train closest to the elevator, for those who just wanted to skip ahead to the next stage and didn’t care at all who they were saddled with in the interim.

The wheels screeched and the doors slammed and the train began to move without any new additions to his apartment. So it was just him. That was fine. He leaned back on the seat and watched the tunnel streak past until it was just a blur of black.

But who set up the trains? he wondered. And how did they manage so many, and without a single adult in sight?

And where were they going now. The new message on his phone told him nothing at all on that, or anything.

_This is your first test._

Just that the game he’d come to check out had already begun, on a canvas of pure black.


	2. The Last Trailmon

The trains looked more like something out of a dream than something Takuya should be running at break-neck speed to catch. And he probably would break his neck if he missed it, or worse, because the train tracks criss-crossed and there was no guarantee that, if he went sprawling onto the tracks, there wouldn't be another weird-looking train coming up behind him.

And considering he'd ran out onto the road to catch a ball and wound up in the path of an incoming truck, he couldn't count on Lady Luck being on his side anytime soon.

But if Lady Luck did happen to be listening, he promised the strawberry he'd tried and failed to pinch off his brother's birthday cake in exchange for catching the train's rails.

And then the edge of the platform was coming up and he decided to discard Lady Luck in favour of reciting the mantra in his mind – _let me catch it, letmecatchit_ – as his heart thudded even louder than before.

Then he jumped, closed his eyes (which, in retrospect, wasn't the most sensible thing to do) and snatched out blindly. His fingers caught rails and his foot caught moving ground and he breathed a sigh of relief and opened his eyes and got a more solid grip.

Another train whizzed past him.

The kid on the elevator was there. The one with one hell of a glare when he'd poked the other's shoulder – but really, what else was he supposed to do when he was being ignored? He supposed the other guy didn't have any siblings or anything. No way could one escape being touched and prodded and poked and annoyed in far more roundabout ways otherwise.

He wondered how the other would deal with doctors, then, but the creak of the rails told him he should be thinking about more important matters. Like getting inside the train. And where it was going. And when he'd need to start heading home before he faced being grounded for the rest of the year. And what sort of game this would turn out to be. Sure was interesting, with the trains looking so different from each other, so personalised. The one who'd passed him was blue. The one he'd jumped on was red and he was pretty sure he'd seen a row of white teeth as well. As long as those teeth didn't open, it'd be cool – but really, what sort of train had a mouth that could actually open? Weight probably made that impossible.

'You might want to get inside, kid.'

…apparently not. Though why he jumped to the train talking being the first possibility, he wasn't too sure. But when he hurriedly shoved himself through the door and looked around, there was no-one in the carriage. And though he could make out a few shadows on the one up ahead, surely they couldn't talk that loud? Then again, if it was staff they probably had a microphone or speakers or something.

'Of course,' he repeated out loud to himself. 'Trains don't talk.'

'They do when they have something to say,' was the reply.

And that cinched it. It was definitely the train talking.

Or someone pretending to be the train. That made more sense. Like those puppet shows where the puppet masters became the voice of their puppets. Or a ventriloquist who could toss their voice around and make it seem like anything could talk, was talking… Though lips moving often gave that away, or something common in their tone or something. Then again, the guys who performed in the middle of the shopping centre were probably a far cry from professional ventriloquists.

But still, he'd never seen one pretending to be a train before. And if the train was in a chatty mood… 'Anything you can tell us about this game we're heading to?' he asked hopefully.

The train chuckled. And this time, there was no doubt a few seconds later to remind him that trains didn't talk, because the carriage bounced and threw him to the floor in perfect time to that laughter. He supposed that was the definition of a belly laugh and the carriages doubled as the train's belly – and that was actually kind of gross. Meant passengers were always sitting or standing in a train's _stomach_.

The train responded to his question while he was still trying to wrap his head around that revelation. 'You're already in it, kid, and I dunno if you should be rooting to pass or fail this bit to be honest.'

Takuya picked himself off the ground and processed that. 'Why?' he asked, a little tentatively. Then again, if it was a haunted house or something, that'd be _fun_. 'Is it something bad?'

'Well…' And the carriage bounced and almost threw him down again; he grabbed at the nearest seat to hold him. 'Depends on whether you want to fight for something no-one else is fighting for.'

And before Takuya could ask what _that_ meant, the seat he was gripping disappeared, as did the floor beneath him.

_This is your first test._

And that time, it was a woman's voice but he didn't note that till a bit later. He was too busy falling again – but this time it wasn't a quick and dusty collision with the carriage but a freefall into nothing. Like one of those dreams that never ended until he managed to roll out of bed and it was the main reason Shinya got to keep the upper bunk – and that was really unfair because all the cool kids slept in the upper bunk it would do more than just hurt if he fell off the bed from that height so it really was more practical like that and Shinya didn't really roll off his bed. He just sat up and screamed when he had weird dreams, or nightmares. And they weren't always the same thing, either.

Though this time, no matter how Takuya twisted and turned his body, he couldn't seem to roll out of his bed. Which decreased the likelihood of the whole thing having been a dream but the train, in all honesty, gave the possibility more points. After all, he'd never heard of a talking train outside of cartoons in the waking world before.

Then again, it could've been the conductor doing ventriloquism.

Yeah, that was probably it.

Though it really sucked how he had the time to think about that and he was _still_ falling. He was going to wind up as a pancake at this rate!

.

The boy who wore goggles wound up alone as well. That was interesting, because he'd tried to communicate with everyone he saw, no matter how often he was snubbed. And yet he'd run for Worm and barely made it.

She, of course, wouldn't have let him fall if he hadn't made it. Though she'd heard those thoughts, snaking up the walls of his mind. As she heard now when he did fall, and fall, and fall…

Every mind had shadows, after all. And even though her dominion was not the shadows, she could hear their cries as loud as the light in their souls – and perhaps it was precisely because it wasn't her domain but the opposite to her domain that she could hear them so very well.

And she could use those to strike the embers of those souls and light them up.

Even if it went against the principles she stood for, she had to.

She watched him continue to fall.

.

If he was asleep and Shinya was in the bunk above him, then couldn't he do his big brother a kindness and wake him up from this?

'Shinya…' The rushing air snatched the words right out of his mouth and swallowed them and he didn't get to hear them at all. And if he didn't hear it himself, how was anybody else – namely Shinya or the train conductor or the train himself (because that was a male voice, yeah?) – supposed to hear him? 'Shinya!'

Yeah, that was better. And kind of spooky how his voice echoed all around him like that.

And Shinya wasn't replying, but then again, how was he supposed to know if his voice was travelling through the dream world and into reality?

Or was this part of the game he was promised? Wasn't there a fairytale that went like this? They floated down eventually, didn't they? And there was a cat guiding them too. But the only cat he knew was his neighbour Michi's and she was such an old frail thing who only lounged under the tree in the back yard all day and wasn't going to be useful as any sort of guide – unless it was a guide to a nap.

And having a nap while there was no ground under his feet sounded pretty… impossible.

Though was this really falling from a great height? Somehow, the wind didn't sting as much as he expected. It hadn't blown the hat off his head or the goggles with it (and he patted his head just to make sure of that when the thought occurred to him), and though he couldn't see a thing, it wasn't because he'd squeezed his eyes shut because something was trying to claw his eyeballs out. He just couldn't see anything because it was dark. Pitch black.

Heh, maybe he was floating in something instead. Breathable water… which might also explain where the train disappeared to. He tried swimming a few strokes, and then wondered how long he'd have to swim before he proved himself wrong – or just gave up on it.

But really, the chances of him reaching something were pretty good, considering how long it generally took for him to give up on something.

So he resumed his swimming with a gusto, waiting for his fingers to smash (or even lightly graze) something: the plastic coated wall of the inside of a train carriage, or the colder windows, or the fuzzy seats or the thin rails or just _something_ –

And he decided he better start calling for Shinya again, in case it really was a nightmare. It was good to explore every available option, after all, and if the Kanbara brotherly vibes could wake Shinya up and, in turn, have him wake Takuya up, then that would work just fine…

Even if it would be a bit of a letdown as far as the super-exciting game he'd been gearing up for went.

Then again, floating or falling in the middle of nowhere wasn't exactly fun, either.

Perhaps he should add how useless and boring this was in between calling for Shinya. After all, it didn't appear as though he needed to hold his breath while swimming – which meant this wasn't water, at least.

Not that he was feeling wet, in any case. Though would someone completely immersed in water even know? It's not like they felt wind-blown except on particularly windy days – or if they were free-falling.

.

His thoughts were quick. Dizzying. Rubbing against the tendrils of light and humming and generating heat via friction. And that just made it warmer and more dizzying. A fire whose flickering flames changed every second, every moment –

And he was a flame. Without even realising it, he was calling out to more people than he named. The boy he called – his little brother – didn't seem to have been on the Trailmon and it was a stroke of luck that he'd wound up on an empty compartment and so wound up alone. Flames that had no air to call upon would choke and die soon enough but the ones who could reignite those flames without a flint or match were the truly special ones.

And she promised a reward if he was one of those, and a return if he was not.

She wasn't a cruel creature out of habit after all, but of necessity – and there was no need to pay more than the price the world demanded in return for their saviours.

And it was cruel the world demanded a price at all – but it was in effect the price of their own failures: the digimon who'd failed to uphold the responsibility of their own world and now turned towards outside help.

And they chose this path because they knew they needed the help. Something specific, that only the humans could provide.

And if they were careful enough and lucky enough, something that only one human could provide.

.

He could feel water now, and it was choking him.

He was a human, after all. Humans breathed on air and fish breathed water and he was positive he'd never been a fish in a past life. Maybe a cat for all how he drooped and curled up in bed when it rained but ran about happily in the sun, but he was honestly crossing his fingers for something cooler.

Not right then, of course. Right then he was swimming as fast as he could manage and hoping he was going the right way, though he was pretty sure he hadn't been turned around – or, at least, as sure has he could be without any sense of direction to speak of.

All he needed was a little light to know if he was going in the right direction. And a landmark. And some air.

Well, when he thought about it like that, he figured he sounded pretty selfish to the gods above. No wonder they hadn't answered when he did breast strokes through what he was going to label for the time being air, then when he floated, and now as he swam through water and held his breath and hoped he'd hit air before three minutes were up – but what else was he supposed to do? And his list was shrinking by the minute, or second, or whatever. His lungs felt like they were being crushed and it made it hard to hang on to other thoughts: thoughts that were starting to seem far more trivial than they were.

Because finding a way out was pretty important still. Just not as important as breathing.

Honestly, he didn't know how the people who drowned themselves on purpose even managed it. It was like putting one's hand on a hot pan and snatching it away because your body said so before the mind's even processed the pain and he just wanted to take a breath and it was getting harder and harder to fight that –

But if there was no air, how the hell was he going to get that breath? He could imagine it already, and quite clearly too. Open mouth, take breathe – and gulp in water because there's nothing else. And then choke on water and die choking on water because there's nothing else, die with limbs twitching and he can't even scream because his mouth and throat and airways are all clogged up with water and –

Was that spluttering?

It was. He could hear spluttering. To put it correctly, he _was_ spluttering. Coughing up water in his lungs though nothing was coming into his mouth. Maybe his lungs had soaked it all up like a sponge, or maybe he hadn't swallowed any water after all. Maybe he'd made it out.

But when he forced his burning eyes open, there was nothing. Just the same blackness that surrounded him and his heart plummeted.

Even after all that, he'd gotten nowhere.

…but that wasn't quite true, was it? He'd gone through air and water and air again and if that sort of terror that left him shaking _still_ (even if he wasn't going to admit it to anyone else who asked) hadn't woken him up or had him screaming in real time and Shinya and his parents rushing to his bed, then he wasn't dreaming. He wasn't asleep.

And if it wasn't a dream, then there was a way out. Basic world law, after all.

And another basic law was that there had to be someone or something, somewhere.

So all he had to do was keep on moving in one direction and calling and he'd bump into the nearest someone or something.

Right. He could do that. He could keep going.

Even if he wasn't sure how many starts and stops he could manage.

.

A fair few, it turned out. He didn't count them. He _couldn't_ count them because that would make the despair hang even more heavily and he was already dragging a weight that grew heavier every time. But he couldn't just stop, either, because staying in the dark and silence was unbearable and allowing himself to drown in the water portions was even worse. He was dragging his feet (though not literally and it would be so wonderful if he _was_ dragging them literally because that would mean there was actual ground beneath his feet) but he couldn't stand the silence or the lack of someone to talk to or something to stare at or something to hold on to –

But then, just as he struggled through another step and fought the instinct to just stop, someone grabbed his outstretched hand.

His worn face twitched into a smile. 'Shinya?'

It was the first name that popped into his head, but when he thought about it later, the hand firmly gripping his own was closer to his own size than Shinya's.

And his other hand was gripping the seat again. That wonderfully scratchy fuzzy material he'd complained about so many times in the past.

He was never going to complain about those scratchy fuzzy seats again.


	3. Three's a Crowd (Junpei)

 

At first, there’s just two of them and Junpei doesn’t understand why because, really, they’re the closest train to the elevator and shouldn’t kids be flocking to them?

Unless they’re the curious type who just have to look at every train and then wind up on the farthest one of them all after walking all that way and not being bothered to walk back.

There was a movie like that, wasn’t there? Guy swam all the way out and didn’t leave any energy for the swim back or so he claimed. Which never made much sense in Junpei’s eyes because… what? Did that mean he was happy to die out at sea because he hadn’t planned his return trip? He was happy to die drowning because he’d ignored his own limitations? It was all well and good to push one’s own limitations but there was a limit to that as well. One didn’t throw themselves off a cliff and flap their hands because humans couldn’t fly and they wanted to overcome that. They hopped on an aeroplane instead – or flew a kite or a helicopter or a one-seater plane or something of the sort. There were other ways to cross one’s limits without almost killing oneself – or actually doing it.

But whatever. In any case, the message had said they could pick the train, which meant they were all the same when one really got down into the nitty gritty details of it all. Even if they looked so different. It only took a passing glance to take _that_ in.

The one he was red. Across from them had been one which was blue with a touch of white on the outside, but that was a little far away. And a splash of pink further back, and another splash that was yellow… He didn’t care to process the individualities of his own and if he had to come back on the same one, well, he knew his was the only lumpy-looking red one of the bunch.

And he sat there and waited and munched on a chocolate bar in his pocket because he really wasn’t a patient waiter and had to be doing something with his hands and he hadn’t thought to bring one of those little travel games and he had no audience for a magic trick and hardly anything to practice with.

And then _she_ got on the train.

It was just her head at first: a head of long straight blond hair and a purple hat on top and the hat was the first thing he noticed. A hat poking through the door. And then the hair as it fell over her shoulder. And then the green eyes scanning the compartment and giving him a grin as she spotted him. Sharp green eyes that also held a bit of warning.

And fair enough, he supposed. They were a guy and a girl alone on a carriage and she had no way of knowing what sort of guy he was. And he didn’t make much of an impression, sitting there and eating chocolate.

Or actually… ‘Here.’ He took another bar out and offered it to her.

She stared at it.

                ‘It’d be rude for me to stuff my face and not offer you any,’ he pointed out.

She blinked. Then smiled – though it seemed a little tight, he thought, and accepted the bar. The smile loosened up once he wasn’t holding it anymore and… what? She’d thought he was playing a prank on her? Offering the bar only to snatch it away again? ‘Gracias,’ she said in reply and took a bite, then hummed in approval. ‘Bellisimo!’

He stared at her, pretty sure that wasn’t Japanese or English and those were the only two languages he knew (even if his English wasn’t great by any means). He wondered what language it was, though. It sounded more musical than English, at least – or maybe that was because he knew enough English to be looking beyond the sounds.

Then he wondered if the girl spoke Japanese or English, because she hadn’t actually spoken yet.

Except she’d picked up his staring, and why, and now she was pulling back, slightly stiff. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised – and yep, she definitely knew Japanese, even if it was faintly accented. ‘That was rude of me.’

                ‘It was beautiful,’ he blurted out without really thinking. ‘And honest.’

She stared at him again.

                ‘Umm…’ He mentally back-pedalled. ‘I mean, you said the first thing you thought of, right? That’s honest. Unless you’re a fast thinker – I mean –’

She laughed. ‘I say what I think,’ she admitted. ‘Made my fair share of enemies like that. Or something.’ She shrugged like she wasn’t too concerned but Junpei had a clear view of her eyes even if she cast them down, since she was still standing and he was seated. ‘You don’t, do you?’

Her tone is still light, but Junpei couldn’t tell what she meant by her observation. But he wasn’t. Not really. And he said so.

                ‘Thought so,’ she said. She was still standing and now he was feeling a little inadequate with the height difference. But either she didn’t notice or it didn’t bother her. Instead, she swallowed another bite of chocolate (and that earned her more points in his book and maybe he should stop keeping score now…) and explained: ‘You wouldn’t have stuttered so much if it was second nature for you.’

                ‘Probably not,’ he agreed, though that wasn’t true. He might’ve if he were star-struck by her – and he was, a little. It was hard enough to keep anyone’s attention aside from his parents’ and now he had a pretty girl with personality all to himself –

Nope, he did not just think that.

                ‘Is something wrong?’ The girl was looking curiously at her.

                ‘Nope.’ Probably too hasty an answer and not entirely true, either, but that really wasn’t the place, time or circumstances. He wasn’t going to be one of those guys who wrote their number on the back of a napkin and slipped it into a girl’s pocket – or, it’s the other way around, wasn’t it? He supposed it didn’t really matter which way around it was. He wasn’t going to play either role.

He gulped down the rest of his chocolate bar a little faster than he should have, probably, and a little faster than he enjoyed as well. That was more or less a nervous reflex, and it brought him time as well. Classic strategy to think before he spoke this time. ‘You pick this train?’

                ‘Yep.’ She looked around the carriage as though she was expecting something else – and she couldn’t blame him. He’d expected something else when he’d seen the outside, but the inside was just a regular train carriage no matter how one looked at it. ‘It was closest to the elevator.’

He grinned at that. ‘Ditto,’ he said, before hastily adding: ‘Not that I was being lazy or anything. There just didn’t seem any point –‘

The girl suddenly had her hands on her hips. ‘Are you calling me lazy?’ she demanded.

Did he? He ran over what he said and… oops. ‘No!’ He waved his hands hastily. ‘I didn’t mean that. It’s just that my classmates always say things like walking home instead of getting driven builds character when they’re really trying to say I’m spoilt and lazy.’ Morosely and pocking the bulge of his stomach as he scrunched his rapper, he added: ‘and fat.’

                ‘I see,’ said the girl, and now she looked sympathetic. ‘Or maybe they’re just jealous because they don’t get driven and have to walk?’

He shrugged. It didn’t really matter which way around it was, because the majority always one and he’d been the odd one, like that. But it was just a little bit too far to walk. ‘I ride a bike, now,’ he offered. ‘A sort of compromise.’

                ‘Compromise,’ the girl echoed, turning away – and her tone was suddenly flat and cold.

Junpei decided to cash his lot and get out of that conversation before it went downhill. ‘I’m Shibayama Junpei,’ he said instead. ‘Here for this game-thing apparently… Though when are we going to start?’ They’d been talking for a while.

The girl sat down on the seats across from him. ‘Orimoto Izumi,’ she replied, and her voice was only a little sharper than when she’d first spoken – and she’d been in chocolate bliss then. She played with the empty wrapper now, and he couldn’t guess what was going through her head anymore. Was she feeling awkward? Sheepish? Apologetic? Uncomfortable? Annoyed she was stuck in the same vicinity as him but not wanting to seem rude and going onto a different carriage or different altogether train –

But then the doors slammed shut and that wasn’t a possibility anymore.

He looked towards them, startled. Izumi did the same.

Then he registered the sound of someone bawling and put that together with the picture of a kid with a large orange hat crying in front of the closed door. The two already there just stared at him blankly, and the boy cringed back and when he realised he had an audience.

Then his back hit the closed doors and he cried even harder. Something about wanting to get off the train – but the train wheels were screeching now and the platform creeping out of view.

Too late to get off this ride, wherever it was going.

.

Those three were united by something they didn’t realise quite yet, but she could see it because she could see them all: their minds, and their hearts as well. It had been rather endearing too, for a moment. Endearing in the way the sight of a childhood crush was before it crumbled and it would have crumbled, or else it would have never even taken root, because the world of those children was sometimes too small but at other times too large and that girl and that boy might never have met each other again.

But she could see something resonating between the pair as well and that could mean nothing and everything. Earth and water resonated. Wind and thunder. Water and ice, or water and fire. Light and darkness. There was an infinite number of ways to couple of them, and even more to expand the group – or less, because the more that came in, the more clashes that arose as well and hadn’t ten turned out to be far too many?

But she would see soon, and perhaps those children would as well. There was a third on their carriage now and something unseen by all of them sung a song that dragged them all together –

And… they would see what came out of that, because it could be nothing and everything and things became much harder to predict when it wasn’t just one of them on their own.

.

The boy stopped crying eventually. It took the girl – Izumi – getting up and being unexpectedly big-sister like and Junpei offering his third and penultimate chocolate bar (though really, they were leftovers because everyone had vanished during lunchtime that day and he couldn’t share them like he’d planned) and the boy calling them both “nice, compared to those big bullies”.

Which might’ve been more of a compliment without the suffix, but he hadn’t exactly been looking for a kid two thirds his height so Junpei didn’t put too much stock to it. Especially when the term “big bullies” seem to be specific.

And he discovered exactly how specific when he asked: ‘So, excited about this game?’

                ‘No.’ The boy was still sniffing. Probably needed a tissue of handkerchief but the only handkerchief Junpei had on him was the magic tricks one and that was definitely not for blowing noses. It’d be a pain to get the snot out afterwards. And he’d already given the kid a chocolate bar. That was good enough… right? ‘I didn’t want to come.’

He raised an eyebrow at that, and across from him, Izumi raised both of hers. ‘It’s a far way to come if you’re not interested,’ she commented. ‘Unless you were at the station for other reasons?’

                ‘No,’ the boy sniffed. ‘I was at the park. With _them_. Then we all got the message and they thought it’d be fun to check it out and dragged me along. Then they shoved me here and they’re back there and we could be going somewhere like the witch in the forest’s house and the witch will cook us in her oven and gobble us up –‘

His voice was rising in pitch and Junpei’s mind was latching onto that train of thought and wondering how he hadn’t thought of any of that himself. Maybe not the fairy-tale or witches that cooked people in ovens and ate them… But how had he not found the messages the least bit suspicious? He went through them all again. The first mentioned his name. The rest were just instructions. Not one of them gave any information about the game it offered and yet it had gathered hundreds of children into the basement of Shibuya Station anyway.

                ‘Hypnosis!’ he declared, and then shivered. That could very well be true, because hypnosis wasn’t just a parlour magic trick but a psychological tool.

                ‘Or the mass crowd effect.’ Izumi, in contrast, didn’t seem too worried. ‘Majority rules so everybody needs to be like the majority, right? And those who aren’t don’t fit in but they’re also the ones you can say aren’t mindlessly following the crowd, the ones who are thinking for themselves…’ And Junpei wondered if she was going back to their earlier conversation now, with that spiel. Or if she was talking about something else entirely. She almost sounded like she was talking out loud, now.

                ‘It takes strong people to not follow the majority,’ the boy mumbled.

And Junpei had to give points to that as well. It did take strong people. People who knew who they were and what they wanted and were willing to sacrifice fitting in in order to get those things and be that person. But it wasn’t like each person came attached with a “how to” manual. People didn’t tend to know themselves a whole lot better than others knew them.

Which reminded him… ‘What’s your name, kid?’

                ‘Oh.’ The boy flushed. ‘Himi Tomoki.’

They introduced themselves again and got dubbed Junpei-ni and Izumi-nee for their troubles. And Junpei wasn’t sure how he should feel about that. Two was a couple and three was a crowd but was three really enough for the mass crowd effect?

Then again, if it hadn’t mattered what train they got on, they’d probably bump into each other when they got off. Or there might even be people in the other carriages.

But when he looked that way, there was no other carriage. ‘Guys, we got on the first carriage, right?’

                ‘Yep,’ said Izumi. Tomoki looked unsure.

                ‘Then where’s the second carriage?’

He pointed. They looked. There was no second carriage. Just the blackness of the tunnel that had been going on for… how long now? But the lights were on inside their carriage. Enough that they should’ve been able to see at least the front of the second carriage.

They got up to check. But opening the door between carriages only sent Tomoki’s hat flying off and he quickly snatched it back. Junpei, feeling rather spooked now, braced himself with one hand and reached out blindly with the other. The carriages couldn’t be too far apart and even if he couldn’t see it, he should be able to feel it with his armspan.

He couldn’t. Instead, the carriage he _was_ gripping slipped away from him. Izumi shouted in alarm (or he thought it was Izumi, though he supposed a boy before puberty could get their voice fairly high and Himi Tomoki couldn’t be any older than ten) and then instead of the cool door there was a warm hand gripping his and keeping him grounded –

And then that was gone as well and all he could hear was screaming and the wind rushing into his ears –

And a ping that told him he had a new message, and that really was horrible timing because how was he supposed to see when he was being blown off to who knew where?

Actually, he recalled, his phone screen would be a source of light in this darkness. He felt around for it, the other still waving for any sort of hold and finding nothing, and flicked it open.

There was a message flashing on the screen.

_This is your first test._

And beyond that, he could see flickers of orange and mauve. Tomoki and Izumi. Hopefully.


	4. Dream of Darkness

Kouichi was lost, and he followed the only light he could find.

The rational part of his mind was well aware of how foolish it was. Though he claimed to himself to be wandering with aim, in truth it was near-aimless and now it was literally black all round.

Except the faint shadow of a train track and he was following that for lack of anything else to follow. Though for all he knew, he could be going in entirely the wrong direction because despite the world being round (or so they claimed; once upon a time they’d thought it flat after all), it only flowed in the one direction. There was no walking back and finding the opportunities you’d missed the first go around. It was just the forward path looping round, dragging with it regrets.

It was melodramatic, but environment dictated thought (or at least played a hefty role in dictating it) and his was an environment like that. Where the sun had shone outside, they’d been caught in smelly and glaringly white hospital rooms and corridors that twisted and turned and somehow wound up somewhere if only one knew where they were going. And then there were the elevators: big and steel but often taken up by wheelchairs and beds that couldn’t travel between floors any other way and the staircases were behind heavy doors and concrete and dark and they hardly even looked _safe._

Then again, one would go to a hospice for a safety net, not a hospital, and that was where a safety net was the tattered childhood blanket that one wanted to curl up in, cocooned from the world until they were crushed by it – but the hospital was pretty different, fighting tooth and nail to keep people alive –

And some people were just tired.

He was horrible for being bitter about that fact, he knew. It was the death his grandmother could make peace with, in the end, even if she hadn’t wanted to fight tooth and nail for a survival that would’ve been littered with complications. She said it, sometimes, that she was too old to give everything and expect to still be functional by the end of it and that children like him could afford to give more than everything now, so long as they kept the quality things to hang on later, when their wells dried up and their bodies were loose sacs that wouldn’t fill up anymore.

If he wandered enough in the wrong direction, his well might wind up running on empty too.

That went back to a story his grandmother used to tell. It was about a wishing well: a very special wishing well and all sorts of creatures travelled very far to find it in the middle of a desert – and it turned out the well had no power in it at all. The effort that it took to find it, on the other hand, was what prompted them to try harder at whatever problem they’d come to wish aid for: to try harder, to see things with a clearer mind and sometimes a different perspective – and, sometimes, they came away with new friends at the end as well. Friends who’d been equally desperate and stubborn.

In other words, if you tried, there was a well within you that could make your wishes come true.

But he wasn’t wishing for anything strongly enough – _wholeheartedly_ enough – right then. That was the whole problem.

And it’d been his grandmother’s last breaths who’d pulled away the string tying that cat box closed.

And yes, he was bitter about that, because she got to die in the hospital to spite the system that tried to keep her alive and she got to die high on opioids and pretty low on pain as well. That was a good way, he thought, to die without pain because he didn’t want _that_ to be the imprint for his next life. Pain. Fire in his nerves that would make him… what? Destined to be an animal in a slaughterhouse and destined to wind up in another human’s stomach?

Okay, that was too creepy and he was going to discard that thought right there. Even if it was easier said than done. He had to think of something else instead and the scenery offered nothing. Just endless tracks running to what could potentially be nowhere – because if he never reached it, then it would never realise its potential in his eyes and reality was in the eyes of the beholder, after all.

He really needed company. Someone to talk to, even if he wasn’t much of a conversation starter. Someone to talk to him, rather. Someone who could tell stories in the long-winded way but still not lose the audience. Bright people and made one look at them when they spoke, even if what came out of their mouth was another language or complete nonsense – and to the person who couldn’t speak that language, they were kind of the same thing. Reality was in the ears of the beholder as well, even if those who weren’t blind relied far more on their eyes than any other sense. Or, those _humans_ did instead. Humans who had far too much to utilise, it seemed. Humans who had the luxury of _wanting_ to die and animals with lesser lifespans might call that complaining the belt was too tight in the post-famine world because they lived their lives knowing full well they could be dead in the next second. Or maybe they didn’t, and they weren’t so different after all.

Like a train could come up behind him – but then at least he’d know he was on the right track. Even if he’d have to escape the track to escape the train as well –

And he just cursed himself, didn’t he. He dove to the side when he heard the shrieks of metal dragging along metal at high speed approaching – but nothing came. The sound just stayed there, hovering in the distance where he couldn’t see and he stood, waiting… But how long could he wait? Long enough? Too long? He could just as easily be wasting time and the human body would run out of water in three days even if he didn’t sweat it all out with exercise first. Between light walking and standing still, he doubted there was much difference in the consumption of his body’s water.

It probably hadn’t even been an hour and he he was, thinking three days later.

First came today, then came tomorrow. Even if he couldn’t stop thinking about the consequences of that tomorrow.

Unlike his grandmother. She’d undid the drawstring on the cat box and died, and he was left with it spilt on his lap and he no longer had the luxury of ignorance – or anyone he could talk to about it all. After all, it implicated his mother. Implicated his grandmother too but him telling her in the end might’ve meant she wanted to talk. Or maybe she’d chosen her timing more carefully than that. maybe she hadn’t wanted to talk or carry the weight of that secret to her grave and so she’d simply passed it on.

He should be the dutiful grandson and carry that weight but he couldn’t carry it and do nothing, but he couldn’t do _something_ either. He tried. At first, it seemed so easy. Chase this new road that had opened up – but that was a scary new place. A brother he hadn’t a clue about. A father he’d thought had abandoned him and now it turned out his mother wasn’t nearly as blameless as he’d believed (or as perfect as he believed what had been wrong with that, because didn’t children often think such things of their parents? And he was eleven and so still a child). And a stepmother that didn’t look at all like the fairy-tale who’d wedged her way in but rather like she was being wedged out and where did this other branch of the family fit in? How could he suddenly go up to them and say: “hi. Remember me, ‘tou-san? Kouji? And you might not have met me before, Satomi-san, but I’m your other step-son.’

He could barely get the words coherent in his head when alone, let alone out loud and in company and much less in the company that they were aimed towards.

So these sparkly lights at his front became the sun to his back instead, and if he turned towards it and he invariably did, again and again, he had to shield his eyes to it.

.

She almost didn’t notice him, in the crowd, but then the crowd dispersed and he was left without any shadows to shield him and he was there, exposed.

She noticed him, and she noticed the thoughts that rolled off his mind, how it wandered and how his feet wandered too even if he had a direction to walk in and a place to go. And, most of all, she noticed the grief that rolled off him: no longer raw but still there, unaddressed, and those things hurt because they went against the very principles she stood for.

It pulled at her heart and it hurt. It sucked her in in a way she didn’t want to be pulled in and yet she could sympathise with him. Having to accept things that went against them, went against their nature. And having to accept that their fates lay in the hands of others. All pearls of wisdom that had come after hundreds of years of arrogance and here was a child of eleven who already had a necklace of them. But there was something else missing, or else it was something that needed to be offset –

And then she looked over the others who’d caught her eye and she understood exactly what it was.

They were strange humans. Two halves that fit together perfectly into a whole.

And if she was right, then they were the key and the lock to their world.

.

There was a literal sun at his back. It was the darkness and the monotony and the lack of company, painting a landscape in his mind. He wondered how it would have been, growing up alongside his brother. Would Kouji be here if that had happened, holding his hand and chatting in his ear – or even being simply a strong and silent presence: something that kept him grounded while the whimsical world tugged him in all directions.

Then maybe he would have been the one who ran ahead and jumped in every puddle and wound up with swollen feet afterwards because the rainwater really was too cold, and his brother would be the sensible one grounded in reality… Though he didn’t need that so much now, he supposed. It was all the more important to pay attention to the surroundings when there was no-one watching his back and there wasn’t. There hadn’t been.

How things could have been if they’d grown up together was really nothing more than alternate timeline that could never be. They’d long moved on since that divergent point. There was only now.

And yet… Where did he begin with the now?

It was at his back. The sun. Burning the back of his neck through his hair and burning through his shirt as well. Telling him not to turn around because it would be blinding and because if he turned back, then he wouldn’t be going straight anymore and he’d be even more lost than before.

And yet, if he never turned around, he might wind up going the wrong way forever and never know. But it was the same either way, in a place where he couldn’t measure time nor distance except with his own fatigue, and direction by the bright sun at his back that refused to give any more light but only heat, as though it were angry at his refusal to turn and look at it.

Of course he wouldn’t. He was already drowning in other things and he didn’t need to drown in its exhaustive yellow face at all. And so he walked on, not looking back and speeding up when the burning became unbearable –

But he couldn’t outrun it: that oppressive feeling behind him that engulfed him: made him boil and sweat and burn and it stole all the air from him as well until he fell to his knees and wished it would just stop…

But it wouldn’t stop. He knew that. Stray thoughts twirled as they were cut loose from their contextual stalks but they wouldn’t stop except in unconsciousness and they’d come back. They always did. Even when they didn’t move their bodies they moved their minds and even when one was locked in their own mind, they could think. It was the only thing they could do in those circumstances. The only thing that could do despite the body, instead of along with it. The only thing that set them free from their own powerlessness –

And yet it brought out their powerlessness as well. After all, he clung stubbornly to the idea of not looking back, knowing what he’d see. That dream or vision or fear: of his grandmother disappearing into the gloom and then it’d be his mother, then his father, then his brother and there’d be absolutely nothing he could say or do –

But he couldn’t not look forever. He did want them, after all. The grandmother that would never come back and not just because of the bombshell she’d dropped for her demise. He wanted the time they’d spent together back as well. Their simple, uncomplicated lives but it had gotten complicated too quickly, and whether it had been living with a single mother, or a sick grandmother, or his personality that seemed to keep people at a distance from him (though that worked to his advantage with every class bully he’d ever come across), he didn’t know. Maybe it was all of those things and more besides. Or maybe he simply became aware of those things as he lost his childhood naiveté.

School was a good place to be done with such naiveté.

But still, reality didn’t stop him from thinking. Reality didn’t stop him from wanting a father all those years, and then being bitter he wasn’t there when he wanted him. Reality didn’t stop him from wanting his grandmother to be alive, then remembering how badly she’d been and how very much she wanted the end of her suffering. Reality didn’t stop him from remembering the first time he’d laid eyes on his brother (that he recalled) and how different they seemed from each other, and how there was a family portrait there with holes he didn’t fit into, if there were holes at all. It didn’t stop the possibilities, the doubts, the uncertainties, and the choice that he’d have to one day make and make stick, instead of hovering as he still did.

But now the sun was unbearable, truly unbearable, and he was curled on the ground and sobbing and there was still no relief to be found and he still had that paranoid notion that they – his family – would appear and then disappear into the sun one at a time and he’d lose them all, and lose the road he clung to as well.

But he’d tumbled and rolled and he looked up and it was there, and blinding.

And there was his grandmother, and then she was gone again.

And then his mother and he could only crawl to his knees and open his mouth and she was gone again too.

And then his father and he was reaching out and half to his feet and calling out a mishmesh of addresses because what did one even call a father they barely recalled? But then he was gone as well and it was Kouji and he was running after him, running towards the sun when he couldn’t see anything else at all, snatching at the empty air and Kouji would invariably disappear as well and yet he was still running, and running away from all the progress he’d made.

One could be well aware of the dangling carrot analogy and yet reach for the carrot anyway.

And he reached. He snatched at the air and Kouji disappeared as well – but this time, there was someone still there. He could barely see, barely make it out and some part of him hoped it was Kouji, still there and just covered in shadow instead of something or nothing at all but it would be nothing. It had to be, like all these phantoms in his mind and his body would clue in eventually and he’d fall to his knees again –

Except the figure was reaching out a hand and his own searching hand grasped it firmly.

A real, solid, hand.

And just like that, he could blink and try to make out who stood in front of him as the blinding sun backdrop disappeared as though it had never been there at all.

And there was someone talking as well.

Company at last. And he sunk to his knees – or meant to, except he felt the straight back and fuzzy cushion of a train seat instead.

And when had he found a train? And who was Shinya?

                ‘My little brother,’ the other replied and he realised then he was speaking out loud. ‘I’m Kanbara Takuya. And thanks for that. I thought I was going to fall.’

                ‘Kimura Kouichi… and you’re welcome?’ Kouichi hedged, because now that he’d stopped running and was off his feet, he was rather confused. He hadn’t stopped to think about the ‘why’ at all, of all the other things he’d thought about. ‘Where are we?’

                ‘Back on the train, I guess.’ There was a soft flop beside him as the other sat down clumsily. ‘I could’ve really done without that though. If I’d known _this_ is the sort of game we’d be playing, I’d have just stayed at home.’

                ‘Game?’ Kouichi repeated. ‘It’s not a game.’ He didn’t know anything about a game, but something like that was a nightmare, not a game.

                ‘A nightmare,’ the other repeated softly. ‘Maybe so. I could only drown in a nightmare and still be alive after it, I suppose. A game would rewind to a set point after all.’

Again with the game. What did that mean? And why were they on the train at all?

                ‘You’re not going to get anywhere sitting on your bottoms, you know.’

Kouichi blinked again. His vision was clearing, which meant he could make out the boy next to him: about his height and a hat on his head. But he couldn’t see anyone else. Seats along the sides and with plenty of standing space in the middle but not many places for him to have missed someone – in this carriage anyway. But the voice was too clear, too close, to be someone calling from another one.

                ‘Yo, I’ve got places to be.’

And he only put the implications of that statement together when he almost rolled off the edge of the platform. And maybe the only reason he hadn’t was because he’d caught site of the edge first of all, and caught it – and then caught Takuya as the other boy grabbed at air and missed.

                ‘We’re making a habit of this,’ Takuya said, sounding a little too unperturbed about the whole situation – but it nicely offset his own thoughts, spiralling off with no conclusions to be found. Or maybe that was his own expectations. “We’re making a habit of this” was really more of a throwaway line than anything else, after all.

“I’ve got places to be”, however, implied the train could talk.


	5. Winds Come Together (Izumi)

 

Someone pulled out their phone, and Izumi approved the idea. Now she knew where one of the other two was, and she pulled out hers as well.

Now there were two solid lights and her own. Their three phones. The only way they could communicate with each other.

She wondered if either Tomoki or Junpei knew Morse code.

She tried something simple, flipping her phone cover open and shut. _You okay?_

Nothing. Just the solid lights and now her vision was adjusting to the limited light she had – or maybe they’d drifted closer. It wasn’t like they had any ground to hold them down, after all. They were floating three dimensionally and she doubted any of them had aerodynamic training. Would’ve been useful – but really, how often were they going to wind up in situation where they’d need it? How often would there be winds so strong it could toss three pre-teens into the sky and then hold them there? Or maybe they were moving about but they had no landmarks aside from each other…

Yeah, the dots did look like they were getting bigger, and closer. But, again, that might just be her eyes getting used to things – yet how they managed that when she was blinking like mad

But since Morse code wasn’t working, she’d try yelling next. ‘Hey, guys! Can you hear me?’

Nothing, except the wind howling. She sighed to herself and the wind snatched that up too. Were they going to flop around like balloons and go to wherever balloons go? It was uncomfortable (and she was lucky her stomach was made of strong enough stuff to not have her throwing up already), and embarrassing as well. Even if no-one was there to watch. Especially if no-one was there to watch – because people already watched her and said things about her she couldn’t help or else didn’t care to help, but her own opinion about herself was a different matter. That mattered.

Which meant that she needed to find a way down, preferably before she lost her lunch or her company. And that meant trying to find direction in this three dimensional space that had no stationary flags and nothing visible at all, really, aside from each other.

They didn’t even know which direction the ground was _in_ , and honestly, it all sounded rather ridiculous in her head. What they needed was the wind to settle down, and settle slowly so it didn’t just drop them because as much as the wind was keeping them from the ground, it was also the only reason they weren’t free-falling and finally going splat like dropped eggs.

And she really didn’t want to crack and go splat like an egg, thank you very much. But the wind was a force of its own, wasn’t it? Like all forces of nature, doing its own thing and never listening to the pleas of the people – or maybe that was because people were so fickle and so different that they’d never be able to agree a hundred percent on any one type of weather to enjoy. Those who followed after the majority and those who rebelled against it and those who were indifferent to it and simply made their own choices regardless to others… And it was impossible for the entire world to agree on something, because that was their nature as a species. So why should nature listen, then? How could it when people wished for conflicting things? Perhaps even now one of them wanted this wind to toss them about like balloons cut from their strings.

At least they’d only tumbled for a bit and then straightened out. Trying to keep an eye on each other while they tumbled would have been impossible, or nauseating, or both. But now her heart pounded in her ears between the howls of the wind – because, really, they could fall any minute, the wind letting them go…

But at least it would tell them which way was down, assuming they didn’t drift off course before they could do a thing with that information.

But she could do nothing about any of that, however dire the need. She closed her eyes. Looking at those bright lights from the cell phones was really getting her nowhere and it was always easier to take a deep calming breath without distractions.

She took one. Then another. The wind howled – no, it sung. It was singing all this time, she realised, and she breathed deep and slow to keep her hear quieter so she could listen. It was singing, and it had a tune. Up and down, up and down – and the wind dipped and spiked in turn. It was just a matter of keeping up. Up was up and down was down. She balled up in a trough and straightened out in a peak and then she opened her eyes again. Yes, she was a little lower than the others now.

They really could ride the winds back down. That was all kinds of strange but she’d take it. But now she had to reach the other two and explain it and she was even further from them now. ‘Hey!” she called again. But nothing changed.

She could try to ride the wind up to them instead – but no. She could make herself more compact to sink but she was already as flailed out as she could go; she couldn’t make herself go up without wings and she was a human and not even a social butterfly to own a metaphorical pair.

And it wouldn’t be fair to leave them right now, when they hadn’t done anything to her (or rather, anything she could hear but of all the things to curse right then and there, she was a bit of a long stretch, really). If they were her classmates, she’d have no problem leaving them –

No, that was a lie, wasn’t it? She’d have less of a problem leaving them and maybe she would actually leave them, but she’d regret it after her feet touched the ground. Or was that just pretentious of her, her wanting to take the kinder, more humane, path? Less reasonable too, because now she had a way down and no way to communicate it to them, and she’d be better off leaving them behind except she couldn’t.

Though she was glad she couldn’t, because often people talked a good game but couldn’t back it up and here she was, actually doing it, actually walking the walk.

Or hovering in the air because she couldn’t walk, but that was beside the point of the metaphor.

She stared at her cell phone. The last message was still on the screen but it didn’t help her at all, and she didn’t have either of their phone numbers. One day there’d be internet on their phones and this would be much easier, but for now…

Then she blinked. She had another text message and this one said it was from Junpei.

_How the hell did he…_

The message only said: _Did it work?_

 _If it is you messaging me, it worked – Izumi_ , she typed back, and she didn’t know whether to be relieved or annoyed or scared because he must have hacked into her phone somehow. Remotely at that. While tumbling through the sky. What eleven year old could do that? Or maybe he was a little older than eleven, but he was still a kid. What kid could hack into cell phones?

 _Cool,_ came the next message. _This is going to drain our accounts so if you’re okay, just message if you figure out a way out of this mess._

Which was great, because she had exactly that.

.

They were clever children, tapping into their elements already without a hint and with only due cause. It was all the more amazing because they were humans and not digimon, humans who didn’t know of these possibilities and yet they were still able to see them, and use them.

Amazing, but not unexpected. She’d been looking for exactly that, after all.

Of course, if they couldn’t, she would have let them down but now she didn’t. She didn’t because now two of the three had showed their promise and their combined efforts would get the three of them down – and then it was up to the last.

She still watched them because, perhaps, their finding each other on the carriage had been fate and not coincidence all along.

So now she had four, and she had her eyes on a potential five and six out of the sea of children she’d summoned and who now faced their trials. Cruel trials. Harsh trials. But it was unavoidable because they were human and those instincts are far too deep to dig out otherwise.

Once fear fades, they try practical things. Once practicality fails, the fear returns. And in that fear is the possibility of things they didn’t even think _were_ possible…

And if they did become possible, then they could wake the spirits and the key to their survival.

.

It took a long time, but they had that time… along with the impending sense of freefall if the wind decided to let them go before they reached the ground. Tomoki was the most difficult because he was the smallest and so fell the least, and neither of them had their backpacks to help add to the weight. So they all fell at different rates and the blinking of their phones was the only thing that kept them together –

And whatever would they do if any of their batteries ran flat?

Izumi could only pray to gods she didn’t believe in that that didn’t happen, because while it was listening to the wind that started it all, it was the phones that were their lifeline. The wind didn’t connect them. It just held them, and as they changed their concentration of mass, it lowered them down. But it was technology that lassoed them together: flagged each other in the dark expanse of the sky and let them communicate –

But it would also be technology to plunge them into isolation if they failed. It was a race but they couldn’t rush. They couldn’t afford to rush because they’d be tossed up again and their hard work would be for naught.

So they made their way painstakingly down and waited until Junpei hit the bottom or until the wind gave out –

And then Junpei did hit the bottom.

His next message said: _I’m cold._

Izumi didn’t know what to make of that, because the wind was chilly too: skin-numbing and she was barely managing to cling to her phone with both hands when she had to type a message back.

Then her sneakers touched something and she felt it as well. That icy feeling that shot from her feet right into her skull, like she’d been thrown upside down into ice water. She didn’t feel wet though. But her entire body was numb so maybe that was a non-issue. In any case, that made two out of three so there was only Tomoki now and she’d have to stay where she was to get him down safely –

But then the wind broke and she plunged into the ice cold water – and she only knew it was water for sure because it flooded her nostrils and her mouth and she choked on it.

She could breathe air. She couldn’t breathe water. She couldn’t see her phone now either and, for all she knew, she had let go of it.

Panic seized her. That phone had been her one connection to the other two. And Tomoki – Tomoki was still up there, with no idea when he’d hit the ground. For all they knew, he’d seen their lights disappear and he’d thought the ground had quite literally fallen away from him.

Or maybe the wind had dropped him as well. But she hadn’t heard a splash. Water was clogging up her ears as well. And her mind. There was nothing to hang on to. No wind to listen to. She flailed as best she could but her limbs were heavy and numb and tired from all she’d already done.

She was a decent swimmer but this was too clumsy, too slow. _Move!_ she screamed at her body, and her lungs screamed too. They wanted air and she knew which direction it was in and all she had to do was swim up there and taste it but her body didn’t want to obey.

Her mind screamed. Her lungs screamed. Her body just didn’t seem capable of acting on that. _Come on!_ But her limbs were still so heavy and she couldn’t make sense of anything…

It wasn’t like when she’d been hostage to the wind at all. Or maybe she just lacked that one moment of clarity that would make it all bearable, or the air movement to and from her lungs that meant she still had _time_ –

And then she was waking up, cold and wet but no longer numb and in a puddle of water and something soapy and in front of a campfire. And she blinked, slowly, because none of that was really coming together. Soap water and camp fires didn’t go together, and neither of those things went with a tornado-like wind that had tossed them from the carriage of a train and into the sky and then held them there, or whatever ice cold water they’d stepped into because they’d found no land instead. Was this the shore to that ocean? Perhaps. But that still didn’t explain the soapy water.

‘Oh good,’ said Tomoki, sounding relieved. ‘You’re awake.’

She stared at him. He looked drier than she did, sitting close to the fire. He patted the trunk next to him and she sat down there as well and it was instantly warmer. Junpei wasn’t there. ‘Junpei?’ Her voice came out a croak.

‘Uhh, before that.’ Tomoki sounded sheepish, or worried, or a mix of both. ‘Are your lungs okay?’

_My lungs?_

‘You were coughing out that stuff.’ He pointed to the other side of the fire, in the puddle she’d lain. ‘I mean, I get the water but that white foamy stuff… Junpei-san said it was because the water got into your lungs.’

So he was out of that hell-hole, even if he wasn’t in sight. That was a relief.

And the water had gotten into her lungs? ‘It did feel like that,’ she admitted. ‘My lungs were burning and I couldn’t breathe, and even though I knew where the surface was and how to swim, I still couldn’t reach it.’

‘It’s ice water,’ Tomoki explained. ‘We’ve landed in a glacier.’

‘A glacier,’ Izumi repeated. Now that he mentioned it, he was looking pale… And shivering despite the fire. She was warmer though. ‘Great, don’t tell me I had hypothermia too.’

Tomoki shrugged. ‘None of us are doctors,’ he said. ‘And we don’t come from Hokkaido, either.’

‘Guess that’s true…’ And Italy’s winter had nothing on Japan. She flexed her fingers. They were still stiff but now there was a pricking sensation in their tips. Hopefully that meant the numbness was fading. Hypothermia could mean frostbite and lost fingers and toes and even if that was more a horror tale than practical advice from the camp counsellor at the time, it was all she had to go on. She didn’t like the cold. No-one in their family did and they always stayed warm. She always had her hoodie –

No, she wasn’t wearing it now. It was just her striped t-shirt. ‘My hoodie?’ she asked.

Tomoki passed it over and she put it on. It felt snug and warm over her still soaked things… And maybe that hadn’t been a bright idea. It was going to get wet again. But she’d dry out, eventually. Or wouldn’t, if it really was a glacier and really was cold. And it probably was.

No way any of _that_ had been a dream, or a nightmare.

‘Is our luck that rotten?’ she groaned. ‘What is all this, anyway?’

In answer, Tomoki held out her phone and she grabbed it – probably too enthusiastically, considering the startled look on Tomoki’s face, but she couldn’t help it. It had become her lifeline – _their_ lifeline – and now that it was back in her hands, she felt calmer.

She hadn’t even realised her heart had been so loud until it quietened.

She just held it a moment. It wasn’t particularly warm, nor particularly cold, but it was comforting and that was all that mattered. And then, finally, she flipped open the phone and stared at the new message. Unsigned, and an unknown number.

_You have passed the first of the trials you will face. I pray for your continued success._

‘W-what..?’ she stuttered. ‘A trial? Is that what they call it?’

Whatever possessed her to listen to that stupid text message in the first place? She prided herself as being someone who _didn’t_ follow the crowd and yet she’d done exactly that. And now there was this. In a glacier who knew where (because were there even glaciers _anywhere_ in Japan?) after bouncing in the sky and skinny-dipping in ice cold water was summed up as a trial, and the first of many to boot, then what had they gotten themselves blindly involved in?

‘This has got to be several layers of illegal,’ she muttered, after she reread the message a third time. ‘Technically, we didn’t agree to anything. We just came to check things out.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Tomoki quietly, and Izumi was suddenly reminded of how he’d protested his presence on the train. But what could she say? A meaningless apologise or promise? But before she could think of anything, he spoke again: ‘I couldn’t do anything earlier. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry?’ Izumi echoed. ‘If Junpei hadn’t hacked our phones, we’d have been goners.’

‘Not you,’ he countered. ‘You worked out how to get down, even though we couldn’t. You didn’t have to stay.’

‘Of course I did,’ she protested. ‘Okay, I did go through the whole argument in my head but the truth of the matter was I couldn’t just _leave_ you two up there. I’d never have been able to walk away even if I did. Even if I didn’t know you, or worse, if I hated you.’

He half-smiled. ‘If you hated us and still saved us, then you would’ve saved anybody, I guess.’

‘I didn’t mean I hate you.’ Izumi waved her hands in a placating gesture. ‘I was just thinking out loud… Of people I could’ve been with and wouldn’t have felt so inclined to save. But you and Junpei haven’t done anything to make me hate you, yet. And one of you dragged me out of the water, right?’ Because she certainly didn’t remember doing it herself.

‘I did,’ Tomoki confirmed, and she stared at him in a little surprise because he was so slim and small… and maybe that was why. The heavier two had sunk faster. Or something. ‘But Junpei-san saved himself, and it was because of him I could find you. See, there was this bright flash of light and then –‘

‘And then this,’ Junpei grumbled from behind her.

She half-shrieked and spun around on her stump – and then she gaped.

Junpei was either behind the weird looking dwarf with the long nose and the hammer, or he _was_ it.


	6. Shadows in the Light

Kouji despised the black canvas. In his dreams, he reached for a wall that had to be there, logically, but he could never touch. And he did the same thing this time. He was in a train, on a train carriage – and really, the train carriage wasn't very big and barely wider than a couple of hand spans – or a few. And even if he'd been turned around and lost his bearings, there was the door to either end of the carriage not too far off. And yet he couldn't reach it.

Like those never-ending nightmares, he couldn't reach it. But he was stubborn. He wasn't going to stop until his lungs screamed and his legs gave out and maybe he could only keep on doing that because it paid. He'd wake up, if he didn't reach the end and prove it wasn't a dream.

Except he reached the end this time… Though that in and of itself wasn't proof enough to say it wasn't a dream. His hands found a door handle nonetheless, and he twisted it and cracked it open.

Light spilled through, but illuminated nothing but his own body. It just dulled the black: turned it grey. Behind the door, it seemed, was light too bright to see through or past and he'd be just as blind, but he couldn't stay with the door partway open either.

And there was nothing on this side, except his sweat and pain and panting breaths.

He pushed the door all the way open and went through.

.

It was too bright. It burned through his eyes into his skull and he marvelled at how a headache hadn't taken root. He wasn't prone to migraines per say, but his father was forever complaining on particularly bright days, or when they had brand new bulbs (up to the point where they switched to power saving ones that were duller but lasted longer and, most importantly, didn't give his father a migraine). If the gene skipped him, he was happy for it. But he wasn't happy about the fact that he still couldn't see.

Still, the light wasn't as suffocating as the darkness was. It was almost tangible. Concrete. He wasn't running full force through it but walking more sedately – stumbling, rather, because now his legs were screaming at him but there was nothing here. He had to keep on going.

At some point, his vision settled. Maybe that had just been a case of going outside after being in a dark room and his eyes had finally adjusted – or maybe the light had just gotten a little dimmer. There still wasn't anything to see but what he carried: his own body, the clothes on it, and the wallet and phone in his pockets.

He hadn't exactly planned for a long trip. He hadn't planned for any sort of trip, actually. He'd just stormed out, felt guilty, and decided flowers would make a good apology and anniversary gift but then had taken the first opportunity to chicken out of it. Or delay it. He'd go back for those flowers. Or get a new bouquet made if the salesgirl gave up on him. At least he knew what to get this. White poppies and purple hycanthias. And blame it on the original flower girl, regardless of what happened this time around. Even if he'd technically been the one to point at the flowers.

Really, he'd had a fifty-fifty chance of screwing it all up. Or was it seventy-five percent? Two questions with two choices and only one combination of the right answer. Yeah, he'd only had a twenty-five percent chance of getting it right, without factoring in the extra things like his knowledge for flowers or his art sense – and really, both those things would have only dragged the number down further in his case.

And then factor in the possibility of never going back for them. Flowers were expensive. But he hardly spent his pocket money anyway. He was fine on that front and it wasn't because he was stingy. He just didn't have many things he wanted to spend it on. He wasn't the type of guy who wanted to collect the newest action hero or the newest movie or newest book or newest anything, really. His father played for his lessons, both school and extra-curricular and he had his guitar in his room or his own too legs when he wanted fresh air. There just wasn't anything else to it.

But as for not going back for those flowers… He intended to, but extra time could do anything, truth be told. It might taper his mood a little more, or it might sharpen it. Something new might pop up to change his mind (because, see? He'd already used money on a ticket he hadn't originally planned for). He could forget entirely and head home and only remember afterwards when he had no present to give. He could wind up staying up all night and miss the anniversary entirely – and he wondered, would his father tell him off then, or give him that sad and pleading look and ask him to try and act more as a part of the family –

But he was already a part of the family. He'd always been. He wasn't the new addition who needed to cement their role before it was cut away.

See, in the light he could think. In the darkness, he was near mindless and he despised that.

Though there was something now and seeing something after so long of nothing sucked the thoughts right of him again. A shadow of some sort. A speck of something or someone in the distance.

He walked that way. It was the only landmark, the only way to go.

.

She watched him go.

Ideally, she would have stopped him but this wasn't the ideal situation. And the ideal situation had failed. They'd tried to save everyone, spare everyone, and they hadn't managed it. In her visions, at least. What the future would be. They were solidifying now, those visions. When her doubts crept it, they showed why she had to soldier on.

But there was no happy ending to set her mind at ease, to tell her unequivocally she – they – were doing the correct thing. Not by those children. Not in the short term, at least. They'd all hurt from their very souls by the time the first test was over but they'd all be standing up again. And they'd break them again. And make them stand. Until they could withstand the force of their spirit shattering that final time and survive it all –

Because they couldn't pay for their own world with the lifeblood of a human from another world. It was a curse. Or taboo that create the curse within their own minds. It didn't matter. They simply couldn't do it.

Even if it could have been argued that they were spilling that lifeblood anyway, just in smaller amounts and not enough to bathe the saved world red.

She saw that future too many times. Empty blue eyes and she wasn't sure why she knew it was a human because Lucemon was said to have blue eyes as well. Lucemon: the archangel who'd once sought to bring peace to the world and had managed it. Who had once become its monarch and ruled with his warm hands of peace until he blackened them, until he struck out instead of defended and shattered the peace he'd worked so hard to create.

And then the sealing ritual, after too many had tried and failed to bring them down.

Heroes, some called them.

Cowards, others said.

A bit of both, she thought. They'd been cautious. They'd left their method of sealing behind and their tools as well and faded into the crust of the digital world. They left knowledge of their sacrifice and knowledge of their eternal life as well: their transcendence.

They were the legendary warrior spirits who needed human souls to awaken again.

And the tale had been passed down. Embellished by the story tellers until there was few facts left in the tale and only the most salient ones – but for those who'd inherited the throne… They'd prescribed the true tale, in it's entirely, and guarded it well.

And they had what they needed from both the past and the future to plot their course, despite how their hearts might rebel against it.

And maybe that was why they could bear it all. Why they could do things that would, otherwise, no doubt have torn them apart and into lonely pieces. Why they could drag humans into their problems so stubbornly and keep on pushing them when ideally it would be themselves and their own subjects they'd push. But digimon couldn't save the digital world. They knew that.

It was humans who'd been trusted with the key to their fates – if only they were moulded into shape.

And so she watched him go. Walk towards his new overseer even though her heart bid her to call him back, to pluck him out of the darkness he's wandering in to by following the shadow in the light…

So easily she could have made a light in the gloom instead, before they'd even come into this stage.

.

He knew his role.

He was horrified at first, because he was pure and innocent back then. Because he believed in the peaceful world they could create with their own hands and keep with their own hands and all without another war or bloodshed.

He'd believed in a world where they could talk about the problems and reach a conclusion that satisfied them all without too heavy losses to suffer through. But that had been too fragile a dream. Doomed from the start and maybe it was because of the unequal divide of labour or the world or maybe they were too different to ever be able to live in peace forever.

In many worlds, Ofanimon told him, he went mad with the stress of it all. Or she did. Or Seraphimon. Always one of them. Sometimes more than one. Sometimes all three. It was random. No real pattern. Just whichever of them touched the darkness first. Just wherever the world eroded first. And then there'd be a desperate struggle to save the land and they'd fail by themselves. Sometimes, they'd call the humans in. Sometimes, the humans would win.

But sometimes even the humans failed. And even when the humans won, they lost.

Unlike digimon, they couldn't be reborn. They didn't get second leases of life.

And a digital world built on the blood of a human was cursed to a death more horrific than the ones they orchestrated themselves.

And though he wasn't sinking yet, or so he told himself, he knew he had to play the part. They all had to play the part. Promote suffering in a world they'd sworn to keep the peace of because peace did not create strength. Not the type of strength, at least, that would save the world.

And the humans might scream now, might complain after – but after still they'd realise what they'd been spared, what they'd all been spared.

It was a price all of them were more than willing to pay.

Even the humans in those other futures, those other possibilities, who could look back with regret but do nothing to change it at all.

.

The speck of something grey amidst the white began to grow and take form. It grew tall, like a child in the distance at first but then shooting past him and becoming in adult. It seemed to have long hair tied back – or perhaps that was a hat or something entirely distinct from the human there.

But there was someone there and they were getting bigger and that was the landmark he headed towards. And he could do so slowly now. At his own pace. Rest and watch it not change at all because it did change, albeit slowly. But maybe that was his fault. Because his legs were screaming no matter how much he rested them and maybe he needed to lie in bed for a few hours before they stopped, but he didn't have the luxury or the time.

The place was too bright to get any sleep in, but that was fine. It was hardly the place to go to sleep in. And he could hardly just sleep anywhere. He'd had to sometimes: sleep on the train or in the car, but they still had seats. Something against his back. Some sort of structure. Here there was no structure at all.

Just the shadow of something he could only follow.

And then the background began to take shape as well. The white faded away and it was growing dark again. He froze for a bit. For a while, rather, because once he stopped walking, his knees caved and he sat on the ground for a good hour – or few. It was hard to tell the time, now, and his phone wasn't helping. It seemed to be working fine otherwise. The time didn't move from six in the afternoon and no phone calls were getting through.

He'd gotten on the strange train at Shibuya station around six in the afternoon, hadn't he?

But sitting down wasn't getting him anywhere, when even the time didn't move. And if he looked away from the shadow, his eyes slid out of focus and he couldn't make anything else out either: his sleeves, his hands, his phone screen…

The only thing he really could do was follow that shadow, and so he did. And details bled into the surroundings ever so slowly until it wasn't white anymore, but grey, then almost black and he wondered what would happen if he sat down now because his calves were still screaming –

But it was so hard to see the shadow now, and if he sat down and lost it, he might not find it again.

So he trudged, but now he had other landmarks, stationary ones, to tell him he was slowing down and eventually he did lose the shadow. And he collapsed on the spot and stared at dark-trunked trees because there was nothing else and breathed –

And then coughed and coughed and coughed because it smelt like wet earth but there'd been nothing else to smell and it burned: burned his nostrils, and his throat, and he just coughed and coughed until his nose and throat were screaming too.

There wasn't any water nearby, was there? He couldn't see any, anyway. Just trees that weren't any better at giving direction but could at least give the illusion of progress when he was on the move. He tried to stand up again but his legs only shook and screamed – and, really, he'd probably overdone it without even knowing which were the dreams and which was reality or how far he'd travelled after all.

He had no choice now, though. He had to rest here. Maybe sleep here. And make sure he didn't get too stiff if this wasn't a dream and he didn't wake up refreshed and somewhere else by the end of it.

He didn't. there were still those trees when he next woke up, barely able to move and his phone screen flashing.

But he managed. Slowly. Steadily. Like he'd stretch himself out after a particularly intense training session, except it was more his legs than anything else. His arms had been dead weight. And he checked his phone while he did that. Cringed as he stretched his legs. Stared in confusion at the message on his phone.

_You've passed the first test._

_The second test is now beginning._

He read the words once. Just words. But when he read them again, there was a voice. Though not female like the voice who'd illustrated the test. This one was male. Male and unfamiliar.

As for the test… What had it been? To walk all the way to this forest that gave no landmarks through other equally nondescript places? Were those places meant to make him fall? That place of pure darkness where he could only run at full speed until he reached the end. The blinding white light that could've stabbed into his skull and seared holes in his eyes and brains but hadn't. And now the forest where Alice from the fairytale had wandered into and gotten lost, except there was no Cheshire cat to guide her.

Maybe that was the second test. To find the Cheshire cat.

He snorted to himself as he lay, staring at the dark sky. Couldn't there have been a moon? Or some stars? But it wasn't that bad. Better than that pure darkness without anything at all. Better than the light as well. The sort of place, aside from the lack of anything in the sky, one could go camping in, and stargaze in a sleeping bag when everyone else was asleep and the campfire was out. Except there was no everybody else and no sleeping bag and no stars to gaze up at and his legs were hurting and he'd just woken up and it shouldn't even be night anymore…

Though, really, he could have easily woken up and found himself still in the dream. In all honesty, that was the most sensible answer because places of absolute darkness might exist in the far reaches of place, but there wasn't a such thing called absolute light.

It wasn't fair at all, but that was the balance of the world. Light only made up three percent of the universe.


	7. The Light at the End of the Tunnel (Kouichi)

So they were on a train platform in the middle of nowhere and the train – talking train, at that – had just left them.

Well, at least he had some company. And he could kind of see. Which seemed to be more than his companion could. 'You're about to walk off the edge again,' he warned. It was the third time already, but he couldn't blame a guy for being disoriented. If he closed his eyes, he'd be in exactly the same state.

And then there was the whole figuratively stumbling through the last week or so thing.

'Thanks, buddy,' Takuya sighed. 'Man, this is tough. I probably shouldn't move at all but I can't stay still. Are we boxed in?'

'Yeah.' He'd already checked. 'We could jump down though.' Really, it was the only way off the platform – and not entirely safe. Jumping blind? And onto tracks where trains ran far faster than humans did. But they hadn't heard a train since the one that left them. Maybe, _maybe,_ they'd actually be okay in jumping down.

Unless bad luck or a sentient train was waiting to run them over the moment they did jump.

'Let's go for it,' Takuya said. 'We won't get anywhere staying here if there's no train.'

Kouichi prayed for a train to show up in the next ten seconds. Nothing happen. 'Right,' he sighed, walking over to the edge. 'How are we going to do this?'

'I'll have to jump first, I guess,' said Takuya. 'You won't be able to tell me when to jump otherwise.'

'Guess so.' He was right about that, but "when" wasn't the only thing to consider. 'Have you jumped off a platform before?'

'Sure.' Takuya shrugged. 'I mean, I know we're not supposed to, but you know. Rebellious kid-type.'

Considering that simplified things, he wasn't going to complain in the least. 'Okay, walk forward. _Slowly_.'

Takuya was still faster than Kouichi would've liked, but at least he stopped when Kouichi said stop. 'Nice,' Takuya rolled his sneaker toes on the edge. 'I can feel the edge. And I can't hear a train. Can you see a light or anything?'

'No.' Kouichi shook his head, though now there were two reasons Takuya couldn't see him. 'But there wasn't a light on the talking train from before?'

'Seriously?' Takuya groaned. 'Weird train. At least it was noisy. Anyway, I'm jumping.'

And he did, stumbling a little and muttering a swear before standing up. 'I'm fine.'

Right, so it was going to hurt a bit. Great. But there really wasn't any other choie and the faster he jumped down too, the faster they could get off the tracks.

So Kouichi walked carefully over to the edge, counted to three, and jumped down next to Takuya and stumbled, reaching for the other's shoulder to steady himself.

'You okay?'

'Yeah, just overbalanced.' He pulled the other away from the tracks, until he could make out the tracks but wouldn't be run over by a train if one happened to come along.

'You're not one of those goody two-shoes who's never jumped train tracks before, are you?'

'I'm not a goody two-shoes.' Kouichi rolled his eyes at the other's teasing tone – or he thought it was teasing, anyway. 'I've never jumped onto train tracks before, though.'

'Really?' Now he sounded curious. Or that was scepticism disguised as curiosity. 'What sort of trouble have you gotten into, then?'

'The most common one is doing other stuff in class.' He was still holding Takuya's hand. He sort of had to, because Takuya couldn't see where he was going at all. But he could, slightly. Tracks stretching out as far as he could see and no other landmarks, but the tracks had to lead to somewhere, right? Another station, at least. And stations were usually near things…

Which begged the question as to what was near this one and where had it all gone? There weren't even boom gates to show a road crossing over them, or a station to suit up the platforms, or anything. Just two slabs of concrete and the tracks passing in between. Like someone had just put those slabs there to serve no purpose at all.

'Other stuff like what?' Takuya asked curiously. 'Playing thumb wars under the table?'

'Not thumb wars per say,' Kouichi replied. 'Reading, doing homework for other classes… we played shogi once.'

Takuya snorted at that. 'How'd you manage to sneak the entire chess board under the table and keep the pieces on?' he asked. 'Unless it was one of those little portable magnetic ones?'

'No, we drew it on a piece of paper. Also skipped the occasional class.'

'Useful stuff or boring stuff?'

'Boring stuff.'

Takuya laughed. 'Aside from the shogi game under the table thing, it sounds like you get into trouble being the good student type. Eager much?'

'I learn at my own pace.' Kouichi almost shrugged, but managed to stop himself. It was rather pointless when the only company he had couldn't see him. 'And more stuff done at school means more time at home to… do other stuff.'

'True.' Takuya hummed. 'More time to play soccer, and video games… Just can't pay attention for that long if I'm sitting down reading or listening, so it winds up taking longer. It's just not… active enough, I guess. Sports is way better. Soccer, baseball… Especially baseball with 'tou-san.'

Kouichi didn't say anything to that. He just kept walking. And so Takuya picked up the slack in conversation again. 'Do you play any sports?'

'PE,' Kouichi replied. 'And I play soccer sometimes.' At lunch only, he added silently – but he didn't want to explain why he never stayed after school if he could help it.

'Soccer's fun,' Takuya agreed. 'Easier to get a team together for, too, and you just need the ball. Baseball's kind of tougher because you need the ball and the mitts and the bat and the base plates… But 'tou-san's got friends who like to play as well so it manages to come together. Or we just play catch with the ball and mitt –'

'I see a light,' Kouichi interrupted. He didn't really mean to interrupt but he saw the light right then and it just slipped out.

And Takuya didn't seem to mind. 'Great!' he said. 'Hopefully we'll be somewhere sensible this time around.'

'Sensible as in another train?' Kouichi squinted as they walked. It looked like a train to him, as odd as the one that had left them at the platform anyway. It had wheels and headlights, anyway. And it was just sitting there, by the looks of things.

'I still can't see anything,' Takuya complained. 'If you can make out an entire train, I should be able to at least see the headlights, right?'

But that didn't appear to be the case at all.

.

Cherubimon didn't know the details, but Ofanimon did. She knew what happened to those children in other times and now she could see them clearly: their faces, their clothes – their pain.

And there was absolutely no guarantee that the same wouldn't happen again, but they'd fight it. They'd fight it every way they could, every way they knew how.

It was easy to see just by looking at the pair of them, walking through the dark. One of them was at home in it, with a little warm flame wrapping him. The other was angsty and uncomfortable but still trusting an almost-stranger to lead him safely out, to act as his eyes.

The ability of those children to trust each other when they've only just met was a constant: it was in each and every timeline. And now as well, and that was good. That means they hadn't broken it. The one thing that made it all possible, that meant they could push and push but there was this safety net to catch them if they fell. They could look like they were breaking but they'd be stuck together – and maybe that was part of the reason why the sacrifices it cost them when they succeed couldn't be worth the outcome.

And then there were the so many times they didn't succeed at all, and sometimes they couldn't even tell the difference between the two, what had changed.

But they were changing things anyway. Carefully analysing. Carefully planning. Years of work and yet there was still so much guesswork involved but they'd caught the right children in their net and now they had to manipulate those pieces on the board.

Because they needed a future that wasn't painted with blood and cursed, and they needed that future to actually exist and not just be a dream. And if they had to be the villains or the gods to accomplish it, then so be it. The children could hate them as much as they liked once the world and they were safe. It wouldn't even matter, when they were back home and living their normal lives out once again and maybe, one day, they'd realise how strong they'd gotten from the Digital World and they'd turn back and thank them, and then that little weight in their hearts would life off –

Because, by that point, it probably would be a little weight – compared to the entire world on their shoulders.

.

Kouichi could reach out and touch the train now, and Takuya still hadn't commented on its appearance. 'You can't see it?' he whispered.

'Not a bit,' Takuya grumbled – too loudly, because the two lights suddenly went to four and Kouichi stumbled back.

He'd forgotten, for a moment, that Takuya had been behind them too. They fell together, and for the first time they felt the ground: rough like dirt mixed in with fragments of stone. They dug into Kouichi's palms and he winced as he brushed them off as Takuya pushed himself up. He was wearing gloves, and that was a stroke of luck in Kouichi's opinion.

But why couldn't Takuya see the traij when they were so close? And now there were four lights to content with, the top two swaying this way and that and it was dizzying –

And causing a little throb to blossom into being in some corner of his head. _Please don't become a migraine_ , he pleaded with it, and tried not to look at the lights. He focused on the centre of the train's… face? It's nose? They didn't really study the anatomy of talking trains, after all.

'I'm impressed,' the train rumbled, 'that a fire can burn in this place that sniffs all fires out.'

'What does that mean?' Takuya asked, sounding confused. And Kouichi couldn't blame him. Fire was probably metaphorical considering the lack of any light sources save the train's own headlights, but what it was referring to was still up in the air.

 _Or lack of air_ … 'Wandering around the darkness, without being able to see at all,' he began. 'Or in a white room. Either way, all you can see is black. Or white. A canvas for your own imagination, your own fears to just… crush you…'

'Precisely that,' the train agreed, and the boys were both silent as they processed that.

'But Kouichi could see,' Takuya pointed out. 'It's the whole reason we got here.'

'Which is worse?' returned the train. 'A black room or a white one?'

'Black,' said Takuya immediately.

'White,' said Kouichi, a little later.

'Precisely that,' said the train, and now they were both confused because their answers had been contradictory. Perhaps the train could see that though, or guessed his answer would invite that, because he continued. 'It's in the eye of the beholder. Some people fear the absolute darkness. Others fear the absolute light. It's all the same when it comes to robbing someone of all sense except their fears.'

'Was this a test?' Takuya asked. Quite suddenly, Kouichi thought. 'It would've been nice to have a bit of warning first.'

'It was the first test,' the train said. 'And you have passed.'

Takuya's cell phone lit up at the same moment, and Takuya blinked at the scene in front of him before the light faded away. A voice echoed from the phone: female, and soft but hard as well. Unwavering. Saying more or less the same as what the train had already told them. _You have both passed the first test._

As though she knew Kouichi didn't have a cell phone. As though she knew they were together.

And Takuya wondered aloud at that as well. 'Why didn't you get the message too, then?'

'I don't have a phone.' And maybe it was unnecessarily abrupt, but his mind was being pulled in all sorts of directions now. _Test? And we've passed? When did we even start?_ He remembered Kouji leaving the flower bouquet half-made. Was this why? 'What sort of test?' he asked. He glanced back at Takuya when the train didn't answer. 'Takuya?' he prompted.

Takuya shrugged. 'A bunch of kids got texts on our phone, inviting us to some sort of game and we thought we'd check it out… Or I guess. Didn't actually talk to anyone. Tried but some people are just so rude, you know? Anyway, it wasn't the smartest idea because there was like no information but I was bored and wanted to get out of the house for a while and… I dunno, something inside me was just telling me to try it out. So I did. But then – ' He cut himself off as his face changed, and Kouichi tactfully turned away. Takuya seemed like the sort of person who'd put up a brave front and preferred it that way, and unless he needed to break those masks, he wouldn't. After all, he preferred his own masks intact as well.

And Kouichi understood where Takuya was going – or, at least, his own experience with the same. 'It was too cruel for a game,' he said. 'Unless this is one of those sick games where someone sits at the top and tortures the players.'

Takuya seemed to choke on something, before muttering rather quietly: 'I didn't think of that.'

'It's not,' the train assured – which, truthfully, wasn't very reassuring because they had no idea how far they could trust it. 'I will now take you through the gateway, if you will please board.'

'Gate?' Takuya asked. 'Like, to another area of the world or something?'

Kouichi just bit his lip. Their only other option was to keep on walking and who knew where that would get them. 'Where are we now?' he asked, instead.

And the train hadn't answered Takuya's question by then, either. 'We are inside the gateway,' he now said, 'or rather, the dimension we call the gateway. We Trailmon and a few of the Ultimate digimon are the only ones who can navigate it. Others will wander forever without us to guide. It is however the only way to travel between worlds without a direct portal opened up between the two places.'

'Trailmon,' Kouichi repeated. So the strange train was called a Trailmon. 'And what are digimon?' That seemed to be the most confusing part of the explanation, though it was all a little over his head.

'Digimon are the beings that inhabit the digital world,' the Trailmon explained. 'In essence, we are all that world's lifeforms. Everyone native to the digital world is a digimon. From there, we are split into three attributes: data, virus and vaccine – and several stages. The stages range from baby to Ultimate, and we advance through these stages by growing and evolving. There are also classes: machine, warrior, angel, and many others. Then we are divided into species. We Trailmon are one such species. A species is of the same attribute and stage and class, and within the species are individuals like myself.'

'That was a lot of information,' Takuya groaned. 'But you're a Trailmon, you said? That means you have a name, right?'

'I do.' The Trailmon sounded pleased. 'It's Dark.'

They stare at him for a moment, wondering why he was pointing out the obvious before realising he was telling them his name instead. Kouichi was relieved he hadn't let the question slip out. That would have been quite awkward. 'Nice to meet you,' he said instead. 'I'm Kimura Kouichi.'

'Kanbara Takuya,' Takuya introduced.

'Your human names,' said the Trailmon, 'but they can be impractical at times, just as it is impractical for you to know the name of every individual digimon you meet. Humans tend to call us by our class except for specific individuals: their partners, their friends – sometimes their enemies. But humans too can be sub-classified as well. They possess no digital attributes, but they have species. You are children. And they have different sort of attributes, and different sorts of traits as well. Some of these traits stand out like beacons. Hence why I professed my surprise to a fire surviving the darkness. But I suppose it took darkness to hold its hand to do so.'

Kouichi glanced back at Takuya again – who was looking equally lost. So they'd had a roundabout explanation that hadn't answered the original question – and may or may not have been useful in the long term.

'The rest is a discussion for another time,' said Dark, stretching out. His tires screeched on the track and the boys winced. 'Knowledge and understanding are both best dealt in moderation, but I will tell you one last thing. The ones who called you here have your best interests at heart. This I can swear on my honour as a Trailmon who delivers the sinking souls for a place where they may see a flicker of something again.'

'That sounds like the opposite of what you're doing here,' Takuya commented.

The Trailmon seemed to smile, Kouichi thought. 'Well,' he replied. 'You didn't need my help. You had each other, instead.'

.

They went with the Trailmon in the end. They had little choice in the matter because neither of them wanted to wander around lost some more (even if they were following tracks and could therefore only go in one of two directions) and the Trailmon seemed sincere.

The ride seemed long though. And stifling, like all the windows were closed and there were far more people on the carriage than just the two of them, although they weren't. It was like a hot summer day with no air circulating about, the kind where heat rolled off them in drops and they closed their eyes to it, because what else could they do? They could have continued talking but they were tired out and now that they had light and darkness in moderation again, the constant need to reaffirm their company with conversation was no longer there.

And maybe he fell asleep. Maybe they both fell asleep. He certainly did forget about that little throb until he opened his eyes to something bright, and it was accompanied by a pain in his head so far-reaching and sharp that wiped the lingering thoughts in his mind clean.


	8. The Storm's Second Layer (Tomoki)

Tomoki was suddenly alone in the dark. The lights that came from Izumi’s and Junpei’s cell phones suddenly vanished and didn’t come back. It wasn’t like before, when one had flicked on and off as though trying to code – but whatever it was, Tomoki didn’t recognise it, and there was no response from the other so he suspected only one of the three knew what they’d been doing.

Luckily Junpei had gotten them into touch with each other. And they’d come up with a plan, even if he’d contributed nothing to it at all.

And now they were gone and he was here, unable to see Izumi’s signal telling him to curl into a ball and drop. And he waited and waited and waited because he didn’t want to waste all that effort and get even further separated from the others and he couldn’t tell the peaks and the troughs of the wind at all and Izumi must have very sharp ears to be able to pick that up at all – or he was going deaf. Deaf at nine years old. Not that it wasn’t possible, but it was still pretty unbelievable.

But that wouldn’t mean he wouldn’t have to listen to what everybody said about him, right?

Or maybe it was blindness instead. Maybe he’d already touched the ground and just couldn’t see anything different – but no. He moved his feet in a cycling motion through the air – though it felt pretty silly in gym class – and he felt nothing but the air.

Then he saw a flash of light and wondered if he really was going blind after all. But it didn’t seem like that was the case either because after some frantic blinking, he could see a little through burning eyes. A dwarf-like creature with a hammer and it swung down – onto water? There was water right under them? That explained where Izumi and Jumpei went. They were heavier so they would’ve fallen first.

…hang on. They fell into the water?! Tomoki scrambled and then he fell. Either he’d upset his precautious balance or the dwarf swimging the hammer did. Either way, he plunged into the ice cold water and there was only enough time to flip into a dive so he was the one in control. And then he forced his eyes open underwater and hoped whatever light source that dwarf had, it was on their side and would hold up underwater too.

It did, though not terribly well. Well enough though because he spotted Izumi straight away. But no Junpei, even if there was no time to think about that. Izumi was sinking and not moving otherwise and Tomoki was smaller and he had to manoeuvre the both of them up.

Then there was a scream above them that terrified him and almost made him lose his grip on Izumi – but then the roar faded and so did the light and Tomoki could only hope he was striking out in the right direction.

He was. He broke the surface and pulled Izumi up and the dwarf was on the shore now, back to the water. But the shore was so far away and Tomoki couldn’t seem to catch his breath and Izumi didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

Damn it. Couldn’t he even save one person? Was he that useless?

                ‘Help!’ He choked on his own words, but somehow the dwarf heard, because it looked back. And then it was running towards them, and sinking, and slamming its hammer into the waves so the water split apart and picking the two of them up under his arms and carrying them both back to the shore. But when it goes to put its hands against Izumi’s chest, Tomoki gathers his wits. “Wait!’ he cried. ‘You’ll crush her ribs.’

                ‘I wouldn’t,’ muttered the dwarf forlornly – and he sounded so familiar. Why? ‘I mean, I wouldn’t mean to but I – but this – ‘ And he buried his face into his hands. ‘How the heck did I just turn into a monster? What witch did I piss of?’

And then it clicked and Tomoki paused in his own compressions (because his brother was very big on survival skills and CPR was at the top of the list). ‘Junpei-san?’ he asked, incredulously.

                ‘Yeah,’ the dwarf muttered sadly.

Then Izumi started coughing water and something frothy and Junpei tossed his own musings aside to calm a panicking Tomoki. ‘That means water’s gotten into her lungs and it’s coming out now. If it all comes out, it should be fine. Just pat her back and keep her upright and coughing.’

And Tomoki tried. He really tried but he was cold and wet and tired too and smaller and not very strong, and he couldn’t keep a girl two years his elder and almost dead weight upright and pat her back as well. So Junpei held her up and Tomoki rubbed her back as his mother would rub his whenever he had the hiccups and Izumi just spluttered water and white frothy stuff onto the ground and into her lap.

.

Later, they started a fire and sat by it. Junpei found the wood and smashed it up with his newfound hammer and Tomoki lit the wood. His hands burned from rolling the twig between his palms by the end of it, but that was another thing his brother taught him. All those things he’d thought was a waste of time were now coming in handy, and he made a mental note to thank his brother when he got back home.

Izumi was curled up and asleep – or unconscious, but at least she was breathing now.

And Junpei was still a lumpy dwarf with a hammer. And a droopy purple hat.

                ‘So you… don’t know what happened?’ Tomoki asked.

Junpei shook his head. ‘We hit the water, I guess,’ he said. ‘Izumi and me. You must’ve gotten lucky since you were still hovering. Light enough to miss it. And it was freezing cold. I couldn’t move at all. Almost passed out right then and there but then there was a big flash of light and I could move.’

                ‘You swung that hammer of yours and split the water, just like that Prophet split the Red Sea,’ Tomoki agreed. ‘And it was because you were glowing that I could see, even underwater. I wouldn’t have found Izumi otherwise.’

All three of their phones were waterlogged and they hadn’t bothered drying them yet. Their bodies were more important. So they sat around the fire and dried and talked – and tried to understand. They still struggled.

.

And now one of the children had found their spirits. It was a mix of luck and necessity and it wasn’t the most appropriate one but that was on purpose as well. They needed to understand their antithesis before they could fully understand themselves. And they would. They would realise the parts of themselves that were lost to them before because they’d made the strong bits even stronger but barely scratched the surface of their weaknesses and that was their failing, the failing of humans.

Then again, digimon didn’t go out of their way to try and correct their failings either. It was the way of nature, to take the path of least resistance and the path that was the least time consuming and ended in the least sacrifices – but they couldn’t usually see that far and wound up losing more than they were prepared to in the end.

The ability to see the future that could occur was as much a gift as it was a curse. And if she could use that knowledge to spare them all that future, then it wasn’t a curse at all.

They struggled now, but it would save them in the long run. She was sure of it.

She was so sure, that she could turn a blind eye to the way they suffered now, knowing there’d be smiles at the end of the road.

.

Izumi awoke and she was just as confused as the rest of them where, except Junpei had calmed down a bit by then and didn’t go running off waving that unwieldly hammer of his. But Izumi was gaping at him so long that Tomoki couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for Junpei, to bear all that scrutiny.

And all he said was a small and meet: ‘Hi, Izumi-chan.’

                ‘You – you’re – ‘ she spluttered, before shaking herself. ‘I’m dreaming, right? Tomoki-kun, why aren’t you something weird as well?’

                ‘You’re not dreaming,’ Tomoki said, as Junpei visibly drooped.

But Izumi seemed to have figured that out herself, and she covered her mouth with both hands and pitched forward. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Junpei-san, I didn’t mean –‘

                ‘Just call me Junpei,’ Junpei offered. ‘Then we’re cool?’

She stared at him. ‘Junpei?’

                ‘Yeah?’

She shook her head and there was a small smile playing on her lips. Tomoki knew what that meant. Izumi felt sorry for Junpei-san as well. ‘Okay, Junpei it is. And Tomoki. And just call me Izumi.’

                ‘I can’t do that!’ Not it was Tomoki’s turn to splutter. ‘You’re both way older than me!’

                ‘That’ll be less of a big difference once we’ve all grown up,’ Junpei pointed out, ‘but if it bothers you, you can always call me Junpei-nii. I’ve kind of wanted a little brother.’ At the silence, he drooped again: ‘Unless you don’t want…’

                ‘I have an older brother,’ Tomoki interrupted. ‘But you’re far nicer than him already.’

Junpei brightened up visibly.

Izumi smiled as well. ‘Just as long as you’re not a bratty little brother, I’m cool with you calling me Izumi-nee as well,’ she said.

Tomoki nodded. ‘Junpei-ni and Izumi-nee.’ He was feeling a little safer already.

Then Junpei flopped on the ground and there was a far bigger question than what to call each other, especially when Izumi tried to climb over the log and tripped. She was still too cold. And Junpei was stiff from the cold as well.

Couldn’t dwarves handle the cold? Tomoki thought he remembered a story where they lived in the cold mountains – or was it only the top of the mountains that were cold? Wasn’t it the same story where gold poured out from under the mountains because of how warm it was inside? Or was that something different?

And he was the only one who could stand on his two feet for the moment.

And then he realised why. They’d been talking and not keeping an eye on the fire and it was starting to cool down. And the ice that sparkled in the distance seemed even closer now – though he was sure that was just an illusion. Ice couldn’t form that fast. Not over so wide of a space.

And if he wanted wood, he’d need to go closer to the ice anyway. Hopefully the wood was brittle and easy to break, because he couldn’t carry Junpei’s hammer.

And hopefully there wasn’t anything scary in the forest, because neither Izumi nor Junpei were in any condition to go with him.

He took a deep breath and crept towards the sparse forest, and put a hand against the first tree. He pushed it. It groaned but held. He pushed with his shoulder. It groaned a little more but still held. He tried pushing some more. Punching it. Kicking it. His knuckles bled and the trunk stayed straight and tall.

Then again, could he have even carried the trunk? And didn’t Yutaka tell him that lighter wood burnt better? He should be looking for twigs.

He ducked his head, embarrassed, and plunged a little deeper into the forest until crunching leaves turned into crunching twigs, and then he picked them up. Or tried to. It was pretty dark that far from the fire and it was only serving as a beacon back now. He couldn’t go too much further without losing it entirely and that would be bad. He’d freeze to death – or he’d make a fire in the middle of the forest and potentially burn it all to a crisp. Either choice was a bad idea.

He just had to make sure not to get out of sight of the fire or out too long. And it shouldn’t be too hard. He could only carry so much anyway, right? And when he couldn’t pick up another stick, he headed back to the glow.

Except there was no Izumi nor Junpei there. There was just a little crater in the soil, and something glowing underneath.

                ‘What in the world?’ he said, staring at it. It was warm, like a fire – but it wasn’t a fire. And, more importantly, it wasn’t their campfire.

He _was_ lost. Oh boy. He opened his mouth to shout for someone – and his voice got caught in his throat. What if it was a trap? What if there are monsters just waiting for someone to trip their trap? What if it was spirits who wanted to feast on foolish souls or robbers thinking he had riches… Well, he certainly didn’t have those and he didn’t think he had a very tasty soul either. He was only nine years old!

He tried to back away but that was when his knees gave out and the twigs tumbled from his arms. That was bad – no wait, it wasn’t a fire, right? It shouldn’t catch –

But it caught. They all caught: those twigs, one at a time and he could only watch the fire quickly grow and he tried to roll over the burning twigs because you drop and roll when there’s a fire, right? And if he put it out quickly, then nothing else would get burnt.

But the fire was hot. Really hit. As soon as it touched his shirt it seemed to turn it into ash and leave a blister underneath.

And this time he did scream. If there were spirits or thieves or monsters waiting to eat him, it would be better than being burnt alive. Though he wasn’t thinking about spirits or thieves or monsters right then. He was only thinking of the fire. Getting it out. Getting away from it. Honestly, he didn’t know which direction he was rolling in anymore. He didn’t know if he even was still rolling.

.

He woke up and his entire body was still burning. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry!’ That was Izumi’s voice, but why was she apologising?

He opened his eyes. It was bright, like there was a sun in the sky now and they’d slept the day away and that was good. They’d survived a night and everybody was okay.

Then he tried to sit up but really couldn’t because neither of them could move when he’d left. He’d gone to look for firewood for them. He’d dropped it all and it had burned because of that weird glowing thing –

And now what?

                ‘You scared us,’ Izumi said softly. She stroked his hair. Where was his hat? And his hair wasn’t quite that long, was it? Something was strange. Something was wrong. ‘You were on fire and screaming and rolling but Junpei was smart. He pushed you towards the water and it cooled you down. But you couldn’t stay in the water all night. You’d catch hypothermia. So we pulled you out and then you warmed back up.’ She laughed a little. ‘It’s been a bit of a juggling act, honestly. But you were a nice warm heater for me, you know. Bet you never thought you’d get a cuddle from a cute girl.’

                ‘I would’ve thought about it one day,’ Tomoki defended himself. ‘Maybe when I was thirteen.’

                ‘Are you saying I think about it now?’ Junpei – still the dwarf by the sounds of things – asked from somewhere nearby.

                ‘No…’ Tomoki paused. His voice sounded weird. Was that from screaming? Or from rolling into the water again?

Izumi must have noticed something in his expression because she helped him up.

And he was taller than her. What in the world?

‘You can see your reflection in the water,’ she suggested.

He followed that suggestion because it sounded extremely reasonable when he was feeling completely out of proportion. And he stumbled all the way because his height was all wrong and that made his gait all wrong as well. He stumbled but at least he didn’t trip. It would be even harder to stand up again. It was like he’d slept for years and had a growth spurt to boot. Or wound up in his brother’s body.

Or had a transformation much like Junpei had, because now he had red armour and oily skin underneath and blond hair and fire humming in his fists and in his feet.

He stared at his fists. There were black over the top of his hands and when he shook one, sparks flew out.

He did fall with that one. But who could blame him? _Sparks came right out of his fist!_

                ‘It’s not as cold anymore,’ Izumi added, from somewhere behind him.

Wasn’t she scared?

…well, she’d had a good amount of time to come to grips with it, he supposed. And it would’ve been cool – because he was tall! And he had fire… darts? He could throw around if any monsters came up on them.

But he definitely remembered everything burning. The forest. And maybe the ice they’d seen beyond it too.

                ‘What are you thinking?’ Junpei asked.

He’d been silent too long, hadn’t he? ‘I thought… the glacier must’ve been really beautiful.’

                ‘Really? I’d think the sky’s the best of them all. Though it’s too bad you slept through the sunrise.’

Tomoki just stared at him. He’d completely missed the point! But no, Izumi was nodding as well. ‘Yeah, the sky’s the best – except when we’re tossed into it completely blind. But there are lots of beautiful things on earth too. Do you want to check out the glacier?’

Did he want to? He could’ve melted it entirely. And he’d have to go through the forest and he knew that had burned. But maybe that was what Izumi was asking.

Didn’t his brother always say he should face his problems instead of run away?

Even if not running away from bullies meant he got shoved onto the train that tossed him into this nightmare.

                ‘There isn’t much else here,’ Junpei said, after a pause. ‘Our only other choice would be to try and swim through the water. And the water’s still too cold.’

Oh. _Oh._ The water wasn’t an option after all so the only way they _could_ go was through the forest and to the glacier.

They were asking him. If he was ready. If he wanted to know.

Not that there really was a choice this time around. ‘Did I burn the forest down?’ _Please tell me I didn’t, even if it’s impossible._

                ‘You didn’t,’ said Junpei, ‘though honestly we have no idea why not.’

And Tomoki spun around in time to see Izumi shoot Junpei a glare – and see the forest standing, exactly as it had looked when he’d first walked into it except less dark.

                ‘I have no idea what’s going on anymore.’ He sunk down onto the soil. ‘Everything I follow winds up getting me into trouble.’

                ‘At least you didn’t fall right on top of whatever it was,’ Junpei sighed. And then did a double-take. ‘Wait, what do you mean: followed? You know what caused – ‘ He waved a hand at the both of them, looking decidedly not-human.

All Tomoki knew about was that glowing thing he’d thought was a fire.

                ‘Well, we were already going into the forest,’ Izumi sighed. ‘We may as well check it out.’


	9. Echoes of Loneliness (Kouji)

 

The forest was strange. It was dark no matter how he walked or slept or ate from those odd fruit on the black-barked trees or if he lit a fire to cook them. He learnt his lesson the first time, trying to eat them raw… They tasted remarkably like meat once they were cooked and a different one each time. The first had given him salted pork and that had been especially cruel, but after a few sleeps (because his phone’s time display refused to move from 5.50pm and he wasn’t wearing a watch and there never seemed to be a sun so he couldn’t tell the day) he decided that getting his favourite food on the first day and then never again had been the luck of the draw and nothing more.

And then there was the moss scattered here and there that glowed. It never lasted for long after he picked it up but it was useful for searching caves where their trails didn’t reach and caves were a good place to sleep – when they were empty.

And they’d all been empty so far, though some had droppings and he wasn’t some sort of nature freak who could tell what sort of animal lived there.

And in the interim he berated himself for getting on that train when he hadn’t gotten an answer to a single one of his questions. Really, he’d been a fool and now he was in the middle of nowhere and could not longer convince himself it was a dream. It was too long, too continuous – and too real. He grew hungry. He grew tired. He slept and woke up and slept again and the world changed subtly in between – but not enough to tell him what was day and what was night, or anything more concrete about his location except a dark forest that never seemed to grow bright.

It was one thing, being in his room at night with the streetlight outside trickling through the open window. He didn’t remember how old he was when he stuffed the nightlight in a closet and ripped down the curtains and adjusted to that new and lesser level of light, but he’d been doing that for years and sleeping in the caves now, he could barely see the glow from the mosses and they were tiny dots far away like on a microscope slide he couldn’t quite get into focus or magnify anymore and he was all the more lethargic in the moments for it and that makes sense. It all made sense. Except where he was and who’s done this and why his phone’s time wasn’t changing when the phone was functional otherwise but out of range. The two most important bits to the phone, really: the ability to tell time and communicate with other people, and both of them were down for the count.

He sighed and leaned back against the wall of the cave. If he counted the days and nights as when he walked and when he slept, then this was the third night. He hadn’t seen a single living thing and he couldn’t even be a hundred percent sure he was heading in the same direction still – or if he wasn’t chasing a mirage.

The only thing in the otherwise black sky: that swirl of purple far away like a galaxy of stars.

It hadn’t grown any bigger yet. Any nearer. It could take him weeks to walk all the way there and it could be nothing in the end. Was there anything right under the sun? It changed with the time of day, after all, or rather the time of day changed when the sun moved. Chasing it was a pointless act. Maybe the purple mist-like thing in the sky was an equally pointless thing to chase but at least it was a direction, amidst the trees that all looked the same.

At least the caves were subtly different.

A small comfort, really.

But the silence…

He was in two minds about that. On the one hand, he’d hear something coming from miles away and he’d be prepared. Fortune favoured the prepared, after all. But on the other hand, there wasn’t the sound of Hikaru bounding about and barking downstairs, or his father watching television and reading papers on the couch or his step-mother padding around the house or the birds squawking outside… All those background noises he’d taken for granted weren’t there. Not even the rustling of trees outside.

He closed his eyes. At least the cave wasn’t unbearably cold. Still, it would taking him a while to fall asleep… again. He needed to get used to it, though. If he was going to be travelling for weeks for a way out of this place – and that should teach him. Avoidance had gotten him well and truly lost and he wouldn’t have been in that mess to begin with if he could’ve just gone ahead and faced his step-mother on their anniversary…

And really, like wandering around town and being out until three in the morning last time hadn’t taught him.

His frown deepened into a scowl and he shifted about, searching for a more comfortable position – though he’d wind up shifting many more times before sleep finally snatched him away. And maybe the artificial sound of his rumpling clothing was comforting too… in a sense… and keeping him up for longer…

But wait, he wasn’t moving now. He could still hear that rustling. And something else too. Softly beating wings.

His eyes shot open. He could see nothing in the dark – no, that wasn’t true. Back where the moss was… He could see shadows there. Small shadows that darted in and out of view but shadows nonetheless, unless that was just the sleep clinging at his eyes.

He got up and walked there slowly, hoping whatever it was had a poor a vision in the dark as him and were friendly. But if he had to pick one, he’d take the poor visibility. Friendly was relative, after all, and too flimsy an umbrella to feel safe under.

But they turned out to be bats. Very big and somewhat oddly shaped bats but he couldn’t think of another word for them and bats… were technically blind, but had very good sonar detection that rendered the point moot.

But bats were harmless, all in all. So long as they didn’t pull at his hair. ‘Shoo,’ he snapped, and found a stick he could snatch up off the ground of it came to that.

                ‘Shoo,’ the bats mimicked back, like an echo. ‘Shoo, shoo, shoo –‘

                ‘Okay, enough. I’m sorry.’ He felt a little ridiculous, apologising to bats, but the social nicety just slipped out of him.’

                ‘Okay, enough, I’m sorry.’

He blinked. _They’re mimicking me?_

The next thought was: _Now how do I get them to shut up?_

But they seemed to do that themselves, when he didn’t give them any new fodder. They simply flew past him… And into the cave.

Lovely. He needed to find another place to sleep, apparently.

And if all they did was mimic, they weren’t going to help him find any friendly intelligent life – or the way home.

Still, it could’ve been a lot worse.

He kept his stick. He should think about making that a proper weapon.

.

Cherubimon stood under the Venus Rose – or on top of it, depending if one referred to the castle or the constellation of stars. Between the castle and the stars was where he was, he supposed, and it was the greatest vantage point from which he could observe the entire Dark Continent.

From here, he could see the lone boy making his way through. And he made the stars flare so only few would cross his path because the natives knew: the natives knew that when the Venus Rose shown brighter than before, it meant some sort of trouble was coming and they should leave. Because the Dark Continent was primarily a sanctuary and a sanctuary was no place for a war to come…

And yet the greatest of all wars was fated to begin right here.

Really, his was the most fragile place in the Digital World. Evil slumbered beneath it, and then deeper still, within the core of the world. That evil touched everything but the path of least resistance was up to him because of the other prisoner…

And not only that, but the spirits who’d searched long and hard for a host but hadn’t found them… What caused the great blanket of darkness around the land and what meant only the truly desperate or those searching for inner strength would dear to enter his abode. But that was fine. He didn’t rule only the Dark Continent after all and he ruled the beasts of the forest, of the waters, and of the desert with its town of steel and stone as well. In fact, it suited them all to have a sanctuary few dared to cross: only the ones who tried to defeat the demons within their souls or had worse demons on the outside chasing them down.

And the glow of the Venus Rose was their sun and he was telling them that the sanctuary was slowly being undone.

In truth, he had to depend on Ofanimon’s words for that, and the prophecies of old, but he was okay of that. He’d spent a lifetime collating all the knowledge of the world. And his life was dictated by that knowledge.

And Ofanimon and Seraphimon and he himself… They all wanted peace for their world – And if they knew the natural path would fail, then they had to force it to change.

Even if they could only stand and watch in this stage of it.

And make sure nothing went out of control, for humans who were frail and brittle without a spirit or digimon companion and even more so when the continent sung to their weaknesses and squashed their strengths…

But he would watch, and make sure the scales didn’t tip too far.

.

He probably wound up with even less sleep than normal and that dulled his senses – or maybe it was the days of seeing nothing and no-one that dulled them.

In any case, he was far too close by the time he realised a lion and a bird were fighting. Or two humanoid figures holding swords who wore the faces of a lion and a bird. They could have been masks. Costumes. Or like those odd bats and completely foreign.

But they saw him as well, and the bird lunged. The lion was half a step away and Kouji had to roll out of the way before it tackled the other into the path he’d come from.

They continued their grapple there, the lion shouting at him to run – but how could he just run?

Maybe it was because a part of him was entranced by the swordplay when the swords came back out, even if he only had his stick made into a staff. Even if he knew one of those attacks could easily slip and strike him when trees were falling left and right – and even if he knew the bird had tried to attack him _on purpose_ and the lion… well, who knew what the lion’s intentions were.

Still, he wanted to watch. So he went as far back as he dared and hid himself.

Apparently not well enough because, when the clash quietened and the bird flew off, the lion was back again.

                ‘You didn’t run.’

Kouji’s lips twisted into something like a frown. ‘Your swordplay…’ It seemed an insult to call it good, suddenly. For the both of them. Nothing like the demonstrations at the dojo. Nothing like the movies were people just hacked at other things. But real swordplay like the kind he’d probably never have cause to learn in this day and age.

The… whatever sort of creature it was shook its head. ‘Like the children,’ he said. ‘When you grow older, you’ll learn sense I suppose and flee before you’re spellbound in a battle that isn’t yours. Especially with a weapon like that.’ He cast an unimpressed look at the staff. ‘You’re a human, I suppose?’

                ‘Are you trying to say you’re not?’ Kouji asked, once he’d wrapped his head around the question.

                ‘I’m a digimon,’ it replied. ‘Of the Leomon species, to be precise. Most creatures you encounter in this world will be digimon. Humans are creatures of legend here, for those who know of them.’

                ‘Lovely,’ Kouji sighed. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know how to get back to the human world then, would you?’

The Leomon shook its head. ‘Humans only appear in this world when destruction looms in its future. It is bad tidings. It means there’s a great destructive force on the move. It means our way of life will be torn apart by war. And yet it also means our salvation is at hand. The peace that comes after the storm. The rebirth… after destruction.’

                ‘Next you’re going to say we’re the ones who save the world.’ Kouji shook his head. ‘Don’t know how you figure that, when your sword could cut this – ‘ He hefted his staff. ‘In half.’ Though he was half the size and far slimmer, so he stood a better chance of slipping through the trees and away.

                ‘There is another legend about ten digimon spirits that only awake to the hearts they choose,’ the Leomon continued. ‘Some theorise it’s only humans who can awaken them, because many a digimon have been destroyed in the process of attempting to awake them, but –‘

He was cut off as a screech echoed around them, and then he cursed. ‘Karatenmon.’

The bird-like creature flew into view, dual blades out and parried by the Leomon’s single blade. ‘Go,’ Leomon snapped. ‘I’ll explain the rest another time.’

This time, Kouji did go… In part because he wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to hear the rest of the Leomon’s explanations. He dashed quickly through the trees and neither creature followed them – and after a while, he outran the sparks and the noise as well.

And by the time he settled to rest in an empty cave that had only dry droppings (from the odd bats, he supposed) and his swirling thoughts, neither had caught up to him and he’d seen no other living creatures at all.

But what else did he expect? The Leomon gained nothing coming after him to explain things – and if it was a matter of being unable to find him, than good for him. He didn’t need otherworldly creatures – if the Leomon was to be believed – chasing after him and mistaking him for collateral, or prey.

In a world where he didn’t understand a thing, he really was safer on his own.

And yet a part of him _did_ want that Leomon back. Because he’d spoken more than he usually did with strangers with it. Because that sword was beautiful, and that fight. Because the Leomon knew things about this world and was willing to share, and was willing to leave a duel to talk with him and then call to him to escape at the resumption of it. Because it looked tall and noble like a warrior, like something that belonged in a fairy-tale or a dream and the crow-like creature was the villain that needed to be defeated –

And what was he? The princess that needed rescuing.

But his stick really was no good if he was up against enemies like that.

He had to stay quiet. And careful. And alone.

There was no-one to watch his back. No-one to say it was safe. It was alright. It was just a dream.

No-one to say anything at all.

Heh. Being alone wasn’t as cracked up as he was used to it being, was it? And he should’ve been used to it by now.


	10. Burning Lights (Takuya)

Takuya didn’t consider himself someone who was easily startled – but when someone next to him starts screaming out of literally _nowhere_ … Well, he thought that’d do it to a lot of people. Or should. Unless they were deaf. Or working in a torture chamber where that kind of thing was kind of the norm and he certainly didn’t work in a torture chamber and he wasn’t deaf either.

So the way his heart jumped into his throat was very normal and appropriate for the situation.

And once he got _that_ under control, he could work out why Kouichi had just started screaming out of nowhere.

The train – Trailmon – they were on was still moving. It just wasn’t dark anymore and his eyes were a little watery after being in the dark so long. Kouichi, in the other hand, had both hands clamped over them, as though it was far too bright.

And then there was silence and he tipped sideways.

Takuya was too slow to catch him as he fell.

And only after manoeuvring him into one of the seats instead did he realise that the other’s hands were _still_ clamped over his eyes.

And the Trailmon said absolutely nothing at all.

                ‘Hey!’ Takuya called. ‘Are we stopping somewhere soon?’

                ‘We’re arriving at the Flame Terminal soon,’ Dark replied.

                ‘And… you wouldn’t happen to know what that was about, would you?’

                ‘My eyes face forward,’ the Trailmon responded, which was somewhat of an answer, Takuya supposed. Cryptic-speak for no. ‘Not behind.’

                ‘Sure, thanks.’ That wasn’t very helpful. Maybe something flew into his eye? But that wouldn’t knock a person out, surely. Or make them scream so loud from anything other than surprise.

But he looked anyway – and then shrieked himself because the whites of those eyes were _red._ _What the hell?_

.

“Soon” was relative, it turned out. Or maybe time had slowed down for Takuya now that he was with an unconscious person and an antisocial train, and mildly freaking out.

Kouichi even started waking up before the train stopped… Because, really, they were the only two measures of time Takuya really had.

                ‘You okay?’ he asked.

Kouichi immediately brought an arm up to cover his eyes.

                ‘Yeah, they are pretty red…’ Takuya trailed off. What was he supposed to say?

                ‘Headache,’ the other said, sounding a little hoarse.

 _Headache?_ Oh. Takuya dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘What happened? You started screaming.’

                ‘Feels like something stabbed me in both eyes. Or the brain.’ There was a pause. ‘Guess they’re kind of the same thing.’

                ‘How’d you figure _that_?’ As soon as the question slipped out, he slapped himself on the forehead. _Way to have your priorities straight. Takuya._

Luckily, the other just snorted in amusement – and then winced. ‘Oww, that hurt.’

Takuya jumped to his feet. The other blindly waved a hand. The train started to slow at that point. ‘Photosensitivity,’ Kouichi explained. ‘Usually it’s on especially sunny days in winter or if I was in a dark room for a while and then went outside where it was really bright. Gives me migraines.’

                ‘That make your eyes go red?’ Takuya asked sceptically. Migraines were headaches, right? How did that turn into red eyes?

                ‘No…’ Kouichi lowered his arm a fraction, then covered his eyes with it again. ‘Damn it, it’s so bright without even opening my eyes.’

                ‘Really?’ Takuya blinked and stared out the window. It wasn’t especially bright now and his eyes had stopped watering a while ago. Then again, he wasn’t photosensitive. And didn’t get random headaches sprouting, either. ‘I mean, sure my eyes were a little watery when we came out of that dark place…’

                ‘Idiosyncrasy, I guess.’

                ‘What’s that?’

                ‘Means one of those things that’s unique to a person… or just rare. Like all the weird and wonderful allergies.’

                ‘Like bees.’ Takuya made a face at that. ‘I always break out in hives when I get stung – and I swear the bees know, because they keep coming back.’

Kouichi’s smiled at that.

And the Trailmon stopped. ‘All alight,’ Dark said. He was keeping his volume in check as well.

                ‘Come on.’ Takuya grabbed the other’s free hand and helped him up. ‘Let’s just get you off the train first and then we’ll work out your eyes.’

                ‘Planning on becoming a surgeon?’ Kouichi joked.

                ‘Nah, I think I’ll be a sports guy of some description instead. Step down a tad.’ It was a complete role reversal now, with Takuya being the one who could see and Kouichi who couldn’t. Almost strange, how that happened. Too coincidental. Too neat. But it was what it was. ‘Another step. Last one.’

They made it to flat ground without any mishaps. And then Takuya looked around properly. ‘Wow, this place is weird.’

                ‘How do you mean?’

                ‘Uhh…’ Kouichi was still shielding his eyes. So they needed some decent shade. ‘Well, there’s something that looks like a kettle in the centre of town – and unless we’re further away than we look, the houses are kind of on the short side.’

                ‘Which story is it where that happens?’ Kouichi wondered aloud. ‘A few of them…’

                ‘Not much of a reader so can’t help you there.’ He shrugged his shoulders, forgetting for a moment Kouichi was clutching one, and he stumbled. ‘Whoops, sorry. This is harder than it looks.’

                ‘Sorry,’ the other parroted.

                ‘I’m not blaming you.’ Takuya rolled his eyes. ‘Just saying you made it feel much smoother. Done this before?’

                ‘Had it done before,’ Kouichi corrected. ‘It’s worse when I’m already sick and then this hits. I got a piggy-back to the infirmary once as well. Most mortifying experience of my life to date.’

                ‘Not throwing up on someone?’ Takuya teased.

                ‘Included in the package.’

And Takuya snickered. ‘Wow, I’ve got nothing to match that. Though my neighbour threatened to run me over when I scared her with a mask for Obon. Luckily she wasn’t in the driver’s seat.’

                ‘I’m guessing from the way you said that that your – ‘ Kouichi paused for a moment and Takuya slowed as well. ‘ – neighbour’s a kid.’

                ‘Yeah, but…’ Kouichi seemed to be breathing a little harder too, unless Takuya was mistaken. He put a hand to the other’s forehead. ‘You sure you’re not sick with something? You did say it’s worse when you are, right?’

Kouichi let go of Takuya’s shoulder to check himself. ‘Not that I know,’ he replied. ‘It’s just… the air’s heavy here.’

                ‘Not particularly.’ Takuya frowned. ‘Though the sky’s pretty thick with smoke. Maybe that’s it. Nobody at home smokes?’

                ‘No… It’s just me and ‘kaa-san anyway.’

                ‘Oh. We’ve got twice as many people. Shinya and ‘tou-san too.’ _Hang on a sec…_ ‘Where’s your father?’

Kouichi just blindly reached for Takuya’s shoulder.

 _Right. Touchy topic._ ‘There’s a bit of grassland before we get to town,’ he said instead.

.

A little bit of grassland turned out to include some holes, which Takuya missed and stepped on, and so they fell, screaming, into the black.

But at least they found shade, Takuya thought.

Except Kouichi had curled into a ball, teeth grinding against each other and head tucked into his legs and clutched as tight as he could manage.

                ‘It’s dark down here,’ Takuya whispered. ‘Like, almost pitch black. I can barely see you.’ He wouldn’t be able to see alone if it weren’t for the hole in the roof.

                ‘Too bright,’ the other croaked.

One of them was definitely wrong, standing on – or sitting at – opposite extremes. Takuya squinted into the distance but he could make out nothing –

No, wait. He could see something. A speck of something tiny coming closer. Though even when it was right in front of them, he couldn’t work out what it was. A hunched over person standing on a disc and shrunken down?

It hovered above Kouichi, who cringed away from it.

Then it and Kouichi were glowing and Takuya decided he’d been the one of the pair to miss the memo.

Though Kouichi screamed in pain until he passed out again and Takuya was wishing he’d been right… Because the darkness was frightening but at least it didn’t cause him any physical pain.

Seriously, how did the world expect a guy to function like _that?_

.

Whatever he’d said before, Kouichi was definitely burning up. Takuya was sure of that because the other had broken into a light sweat by the time Takuya found stairs and struggled up them while carrying someone roughly his height and weight.

Then again, he was sweating too – but that was because of physical exertion! Entirely different problem… Or not even a problem. Probably a good thing he didn’t say that out loud, though. But if Kouichi felt hot despite that… well, that was a problem.

But the town was right there, so there had to be water. And medicine. Or a doctor. Or something to help.

Though everyone who peaked out from behind corners were… weird. There were a lot of blobs. Some had ears. Some didn’t. And their eyes looked like those oogly ones they’d sew onto felt in first grade. Some looked like candle wicks. Then there were pink birds or orange dragons or grey rabbits and they were the strangest assortment of creatures he’d ever seen… Including the stuff on television.

But they weren’t leaping out to attack him so hopefully that meant they’d help. ‘Hi,’ he said, giving them as good a wave he could manage without dropping Kouichi – which was pretty much nothing. ‘Do you know if there’s a doctor around? A pharmacist? Some water? Food would be good too.’

They inched away. Or inched closer. Basically rearranged the masses but nobody really answered. ‘Are you a human?’ asked one of the grey blobs.

                ‘Uhh…yeah.’ That’s right. Dark the Trailmon said the lifeforms around here were digimon. ‘And you’re all digimon?’

                ‘We’re Pagumon,’ the grey blob who’d spoken before huffed. ‘Do you have food?’

                ‘No. I asked if you guys had food.’

The Pagumon drifted off, looking bored and thinning the crowd out a little and the grey rabbits followed them. Then he could see a white gnome and a yellow rabbit struggling to the front – or was it the white gnome dragging the yellow rabbit. ‘Oh, you are humans!’

                ‘I already said that.’ Takuya was starting to get impatient. ‘Look, can I –‘

                ‘Oh, you must come with us.’

Well, he supposed that worked out.

.

Fate was a funny thing.

Those two invariably met the humans, and invariably accompanied them. It didn’t matter who of them wound up at Flame Terminal at the end. They’d always meet and they’d always leave together.

It was beautiful.

It was also sad, because that made them the eternal witnesses to the tragedy.

It was good neither of them had the power of foresight like her. They would have left that path otherwise, no doubt, unable to take the sadness and failure at the end of the road.

But they were necessary. The knowledge of this world those humans lacked in each and every possibility and so they needed guides. And friends in this world they could depend on. And something to nudge them forward because otherwise they’d wander blind.

Maybe they’re a weakness. But she didn’t think so. The three of them were always falling apart in those other futures and the world would descend into ruin. Those children would come together in the end – they always did – regardless of how divided they began and those two as well.

Six children. Two Child digimon. And sometimes the lesser forms of the Three Angels as well.

And it still wasn’t quite enough, but removing from that wasn’t the solution. It was strengthening the pillars already there.

Or so she believed. So they decided.

And it was already starting to come together. Their feet were set on this path now.

Three spirits taken. Another one soon… probably soon. And two more waiting in the wings, and the two they were set aside for were on the move, slowly approaching…

Soon, stage two would in earnest begin. For some of them, it had already begun.

And they were already struggling.

_But I’ve chosen to believe you can overcome it._

.

The white gnome was Bokomon. The yellow rabbit was Neemon. And their house was pretty small, but at least Takuya fit through the door without having to crouch. He’d had to lie Kouichi down on the floor though. The beds looked too flimsy and small.

But there was water. And weird cabbage like things they called food (and it was edible, and tasted far yummier than cabbage – but it didn’t match its appearance at all). But no medicine for that fever.

Still, Bokomon was apparently a mother hen sort of digimon, and that was good because Takuya really wasn’t good at looking after sick people. His mother always did it, regardless of which of them was sick. He and his brother tended to just avoid each other if the other had a cough or the sniffles.

Except Neemon was complaining about the heat as well. And Bokomon was mopping his own brow as well.

                ‘How am I the only one not hot?’ Takuya asked, exasperated.

Kouichi winced in his sleep.

No, he was waking up. An arm came up to cover his face with a hiss.

                ‘Sorry,’ Takuya whispered. ‘But seriously, I thought you had a fever but these two are sweating bullets as well.’

                ‘What an odd saying,’ Bokomon said – before Takuya shushed him. ‘Still too bright?’

                ‘Yeah. Where are we?’

                ‘Bokomon and Neemon’s house,’ Takuya explained. ‘Bokomon’s kind of a white gnome and Neemon’s a yellow rabbit. They’re digimon.’

                ‘And you’re a human.’ Bokomon’s voice was hushed now, but no less full of awe than when he’d first spoken to Takuya. ‘You are Kouichi-han, correct? I am Bokomon, keeper of the book.’

                ‘And I’m Neemon.’ On the other hand, Neemon was far too loud. ‘Keeper of my pants.’

                ‘That’s all fine and all,’ Takuya said, in the brief quiet that followed. ‘But if you two are boiling, then I take it this isn’t normal? Is it the middle of summer or something?’

                ‘No,’ said Bokomon. ‘This was… only a little before you two came, actually.’

                ‘Maybe they caused it,’ Neemon suggested.

                ‘Don’t be absurd, Neemon,’ Bokomon snapped. ‘It’s probably just something wrong with the heater.’

                ‘The heater?’ Takuya repeated. _The one I saw from the Flame Terminal?_

                ‘Yes, it’s the source of all energy in our town.’ Bokomon dropped his voice. ‘It also houses a spirit.’

                ‘Spirit?’ Kouichi asked. He’d inched his arm away from his eyes a little. Maybe the digimon home, with its small windows and curtains drawn over them, was okay after all.

Nope. He might’ve been squinting from under his arm, but he didn’t move it any further away than that.

 _This is going to be a problem,_ Takuya thought, _if one of us is always stuck blind no matter where we are._

                ‘The legendary warrior spirits. Like the spirit of light you carry.’

Neither of them knew anything about any spirits, but that discussion was put on hold in favour of checking out the heater. In other words, with a “whatever; let’s just check out the heater” from Takuya, and Neemon following, and Bokomon following _them_.

Without Kouichi of course, because a heater was definitely going to be too bright, even if Bokomon complained they’d left the only able warrior behind.

Whatever that meant.

.

The problem with the heater turned out to be a great big dog with three heads that Bokomon called Cerberumon.

The warrior issue turned out to do with the spirits because a human and two child Digimon were no match for a green fire breathing Ultimate level dog with three heads. Dark had explained this too, but it was jumbled up in Takuya’s head and basically equalled Cerberumon being far stronger than the other two.

And, as a human, he didn’t even register on the scale. Until he crashed into a heater that he’d almost call _cool_ trying to avoid one of those green fire breaths and found something blue in front of him.

_Was that a human fish figure?_

But it was gone before he could register, and the dog was leaping.

                ‘Takuya-han!’ Bokomon cried, from somewhere to his right. ‘Use the spirit!’

_Spirit? And use it how?_

But it seemed the spirit had a mind of its own because it clung to him – that blue thing, he presumed – and he gasped because he suddenly couldn’t breathe and everything blurred. It was like he’d been dunked in water again, except this time there was light. Useless light, really, because what good was it when water got in the way of everything. And what did it matter if he could see or not if water rushed through every open hole in his body, including his throat? And his ears and that muted the sound as well.

He wasn’t in water? Of course he was. He swam frantically. Thrashed frantically. The blurs turned green, then grey. And finally he emerged, soaked and coughing and his eyes focused again and dog was twitching on the ground nearby, equally sodden. And the ground between them was puddled and charred both.

As though water and that green fire had fought each other to almost a draw.

                ‘The spirit of water,’ Bokomon said, coming over and looking a little soaked himself. ‘I suppose the heater must have gone into overdrive trying to escape it when the spirit stirred.’

                ‘Lovely,’ Takuya croaked. ‘It just had to be water.’

His voice sounded strange to his ears.

And he saw why when he looked at his reflection in the water.

                ‘What does it matter? All the warriors are legend and you look magnificent.’

Bokomon and Neemon apparently didn’t get the problem at all. And the good part about Kouichi barely being able to see at that point was that he couldn’t laugh at the fact that he looked like a stupid water nymph.

                ‘That’s fine and all,’ he grumbled. ‘But how do I change back to normal?’ Silence. ‘You’ve got no idea, do you?’

And he wondered how come Kouichi didn’t look any different than before if he’d acquired a spirit at some point in this wacky world.

_Guess lady luck just hates me…_

Especially when he tried to stand and wound up coughing more water and some bile into a puddle instead. And shook. And tried not to think about where all that water had suddenly come from and just hoped it’d stay away instead.

But it wasn’t going to stay away, even if he hadn’t quite put that together yet. He had the spirits of water now, and that was his weapon and his hurdle to overcome.

 


	11. Winding Roots (Izumi)

Izumi felt strange, being the only one still looking like a human.

As for the other two, they couldn’t look more different. Warriors of a sort, the both of them, but so different… If they were in one of those action games, then they’d be different warrior classes. Or maybe not: maybe just different specialties. Earth and fire, she thought. That was pretty obvious, with the way Tomoki had managed to light himself on fire –

And it really was amazing he didn’t set the entire forest aflame as well. Even if it wouldn’t have been his fault if he had. He’d been screaming in pain and rolling on the ground like they were taught to when there was a fire… But it didn’t really help when the source of the fire seemed to be from within. The water helped, though, even if in their panic it had resulted in Junpei hitting him in that direction with his hammer like a croquet ball.

Not hard enough to break any bones, at least. And Junpei seemed a little more relaxed now for that.

Maybe he’d been scared before: scared because he was suddenly so different: an earth dwarf carrying around a hammer that had split water and looked solid enough to split earth and rock as well. And what were brittle human bones when faced with solid rock?

It didn’t matter, at least. Junpei had managed it which meant he had an understanding of his newfound strength – or a better understanding, at least.

And Tomoki’s main problem at the moment was dealing with being over twice his original height, making him the tallest amongst all of them. The sparks coming out of his fists weren’t a problem if he didn’t move them suddenly.

So they walked slowly… which was okay because they weren’t in any particular rush and Izumi found her legs still felt a bit like jelly. But they weren’t going to comb the forest on their own for food or wood after last night (or she assumed it was night anyway), so they’d just have to hope they found something along the way.

They did, eventually. Strange apples hanging off a large tree and Tomoki’s height came in handy there, even though he did wince as he stretched. Izumi winced as well. She couldn’t see anything beneath the armour but with the fire they’d seen before… There could be burns underneath: raw patches of skin the water had cooled but they were far from the water now. But Tomoki didn’t complain.

Still, she had to ask. ‘Are you feeling okay, Tomoki?’

                ‘…still hot,’ he admitted. ‘Like we’re walking in a desert in the middle of summer without water.’

It wasn’t that hot. She could even feel a slight breeze threading between the trees.

                ‘I’m a little hot too,’ Junpei added, ‘but I figured it was more dragging this thing around.’ He gestured at his long-handled hammer.’

                ‘Well, I’m not.’ Izumi blinked. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’ Of course, she was also outvoted. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Always the problem…

They stared at each other. ‘Well, you are the only one of us who still looks normal,’ Junpei said, after a pause. ‘We’re suddenly bigger and bulkier and doing weird things…’

Tomoki blinked as he charred the apple he’d been trying to twist out of the tree. ‘Whoops?’

Though when they bit into their apples later, they realised they were _supposed_ to be cooked, and so Tomoki shook his fists and fried them all.

.

They were closing in on one of the remaining spirits, and this one they’d set up purposefully because it marked the end of the second round of trials.

Or it should have. It didn’t quite. Humans sometimes found the middle ground between a pass and failure and these ones had.

To be fair, they hadn’t known they had to fight.

The child of fire with a water spirit had gone off to fight on his own, and he had won.

But the child of darkness with the spirits of light would have to fight as well.

And these other three… Thunder with the spirits of earth, and ice with the spirits of flame… Their fight was approaching but she held it off, held them off, because they needed their third spirit as well.

She didn’t think the same circumstances would arise with this one, but it didn’t hurt to make sure.

And as for the other child… He was the one who died most often in the futures that she saw. He was the one she needed to push the least, and also the most. And it hurt him more. She didn’t know why but the spirits of light burned him far worse than the spirits of flame burned the child of ice. Why was that? What was different? Was there just a larger hurdle to overcome, or was it something else? Something more?

Either way, he would have to overcome that hurdle before they could move on.

And with what she’d seen so far, alternating between darkness and light, there wasn’t going to be a good scene for them to fight together so he’d have to do it on his own.

But not now. She wasn’t cruel. She wanted them to succeed and she didn’t want them to suffer needlessly for it, either. For now they could rest… and maybe rest would heal this problem: the pain that came with the light. Even if she’d never heard of such a thing, being light herself, there were humans like this. The proof was right in front of her. But he needed to overcome it, anyway. He managed in the human world, after all. The spirits of light hadn’t birthed it; just increased his sensitivity. He could overcome it. He would.

And if he wouldn’t try on his own, then she would have to push him to try.

But first, the other three…

And this time, they would all fight.

It was also the only way for them to return to their human forms, until they learned.

.

They ate the fried apples that tasted like different kinds of meat, and then they rested, and then they set of walking again towards the glacier. They were more comfortable now, and Izumi didn’t know if it was because of the food or the rest or because the other two weren’t using all their energy to keep their new bodies in check and she wasn’t as tense around them…

She didn’t really care, honestly, how they looked so long as they were comfortable and in control of themselves but that was the thing. Tomoki, burning up like that. Junpei looking positively miserable when she’d woken up after almost drowning…

She shivered. And not one of them had a clue as to how it had all happened. Except Tomoki’s clue. With him having seen a fire that wasn’t their little camp fire and then it had gotten sucked inside. But that didn’t really tell them much either. Didn’t tell them anything, really, except they had to be more careful following lights and fires and things.

And at the moment they were following a glacier. Because, really, they couldn’t wander around without _any_ sense of direction, now could they? The trees were different sizes but they all looked the same. Some had apples on them. Most were bare.

                ‘Ooh, cherries!’ Junpei cried suddenly.

Izumi blinked. They hadn’t seen anything but apples until then but Junpei was right. There were cherries.

Except when Tomoki tried to pick one, a root rose up and tripped them all.

                ‘Hey!’ the tree yelled at them. ‘How dare you go pulling my cherries?’

                ‘I’m sorry?’ the three of them said together – because none of the other trees had talked. Or complained. And really, in what world was a talking tree something they should have _expected_? But saying “sorry” seemed to be the sensible thing to do.

Even if it didn’t appease the tree at all. It groaned and stood up straighter, pulling its roots from the ground. ‘You want cherries so bad? Cherry bomb!’

And they scattered as the cherries burst out and exploded on the ground. Junpei and Tomoki were bigger and slower and Izumi slipped past them all and into the trees with only a single burn. But it throbbed. Junpei stopped running entirely when he realised his thick skin saved him from it all.

Tomoki shook his fists, but very little sparks came out to counter those cherries. ‘Come on!’ he cried, shaking them harder. When he slapped them together, a swirl of fire came out. ‘All right!’

But the talking tree was still going strong. It singed him, probably, but he hadn’t lost even a single branch yet.

Izumi really couldn’t do anything except hide in the trees, because if fire wasn’t going to bring a tree, then what could a little human girl do? But it irked her, because she was playing right into the roles of the damsel in distress – but she was reasonable too. She saw the cherry bombs strike Junpei and Tomoki and she felt the one that hit her. The best she’d be with those odds was a distraction, and was she going to be any good at all as a distraction? Tomoki seemed to be handling that well enough himself…

No, that wasn’t true. Tomoki wasn’t being the distraction. He was dealing with the branches. The vine whips, to be precise. And Junpei was trying to duck underneath them and aim for the trunk but he couldn’t quite manage. Couldn’t manage it because he did need a distraction and she was here and doing nothing…

She must have been blind, to not see how the battle was turning.

She sighed, swallowed, and stepped out from behind the shade of the trees and took a deep breath in, ready to shout.

Something swallowed her instead. Something brown and green. Sticking to her fingers and then spreading like she’d pulled it off the tree but she hadn’t seen it at all. Whatever it was was stiff, and slightly deaf: she couldn’t hear as well anymore. But it didn’t matter. Because her arms were longer now (and maybe her legs as well) and she could fell their stiff springiness as though it was a slinky she could throw and get back again. And that felt weird, because she was used to knowing where every part of her body was but she tried it anyway.

It hit a newly thrown cherry bomb and the bomb exploded. Whoops. But she barely felt it and when her fist came back, it looked fine to her. Maybe a little scorched. Or maybe it would wind up a little scorched. Weird was how she could extend it that far and still have a semblance of control.

                ‘Izumi!’ Junpei yelled.

Whoops, they were still fighting an angry talking tree, weren’t they? But now there were three of them and she dove into the vines, stumbling when she realised her legs were as extendable as her arms and equally stiff at the joints. It was like walking on stilts and she could manage that. She loved doing it at the circus because she’d be so far above the world, she could almost pretend she was flying… But she wasn’t flying, here. She was stumbling about on the ground and she had to keep her feet on the ground because if she stepped on a root instead, she’d go flying and if she got tangled in those vines, she’d go flying too.

Her heart hammered in her chest as she dodged them all and Tomoki burnt the edges and made the tree roar in pain and Junpei could concentrate on getting closer now. It was wobbly and dizzying but she kept at it because the only other choice was to slip up and fall and she didn’t want that. She could free-fall through the air but only when she knew where she was going and she couldn’t explain _how_ she’d known before but she had. This was just randomly dodging things. There was too much going on. The vines. The tree. The cherry bombs. The three of them. And the floor beneath their feet they had to contend with as well.

And her flailing limbs. Good thing she was far enough away from the others that she didn’t need to worry about accidentally hitting either one of them. She was understanding Tomoki’s and Junpei’s problem a lot better now: how difficult it was to move like this, and how strange it felt. And it felt kind of useless too, punching cherry bombs when they didn’t accomplish much now that all three of them had thick skin –

But she’d chosen the role of the distraction, hadn’t she, and wasn’t it better that she could do it in a skin that wouldn’t get her hurt at the end of it?

But was that also all she’d be capable of with her newfound armour? No hammer that could be used as a weapon. No fire that bled from her fists. Just fists she could throw around herself and they still felt like fists. She doubted they’d splinter would if she threw her entire strength into it. Was less likely to than her normal fists because of how she could stretch the limbs. And what was the point of being able to stretch her feet as well if she couldn’t walk on them? They collapsed when she tried (even if that hadn’t been a smart idea anyway, since she could barely control the height she was already on). The stilts at circuses at least had things to hold on to. Here, her hands were doing other things. Punching cherry bombs out of the air.

And finally, there was a scream and the sound of splintering wood that said Junpei had made it through the vines and slammed his hammer into the other’s trunk, and the vines went wild as the trunk split. Junpei drew his hammer back and struck again and the crack widened even further –

And blue light bled out. _What in the world..?_

But by that point she couldn’t hold her balance any more and fell to her knees, and Tomoki did too… Looking like Tomoki. _Oh._ She looked at herself. Her hands were normal again. Only Junpei was still holding his hammer and looking like a dwarf and he pulled his hammer free and stumbled back… And fell on his backside, the sixth grader in the blue jumpsuit again.

And the tree was all blue light now. Probably a good thing otherwise that would’ve been their loss. The shakiness was back in her limbs and she wasn’t sure the others were holding up any better right then. But the light wasn’t attacking them like the tree did. Just splitting into three ribbons and… disappearing into their pockets? No, their phones.

She pulled hers out – and _god_ , her wrists felt weird but she managed it. Except her phone didn’t look like a phone anymore. It was bigger, and fatter, and purple and lavender with a smaller screen and the blue light was getting sucked into that screen.

And there was something flashing on it. It looked a light brown, with darker markings. The middle of a puppet doll? There really wasn’t much shape to define it; it looked really circular. And it didn’t tell her what it was at all.

The other two were looking at their phones turned odd devices as well, equally lost.

                ‘That’s the thing that the fire was,’ Tomoki said, after a moment. ‘So they’ve in here now?’

                ‘Guess so,’ said Junpei, ‘but boy am I glad to be me again, you know?’

Izumi might’ve not been herself for only a little while, but she was in complete agreement.

.

They didn’t wind up taking more than a couple of steps past the three where Izumi had been hiding before their strange new devices beeped.

                ‘ _Congratulations…’_ the voice floated out. _‘You’ve passed the second task.’_

They stared at each other. ‘Task?’ they echoed. Becoming those weird sub-human things and fighting a talking three was their task?

                _‘Now proceed to the Forest Terminal and board the Trailmon there.’_

The screen blanked at that, and they stared at it and each other some more. ‘Forest Terminal?’ Junpei repeated. ‘Trailmon? Anyone else know what she was talking about?’

Izumi and Tomoki both shook their heads. They had absolutely no idea at all.

Luckily, their strange new devices decided to take pity on them and showed them a three dimensional map with a blinking dot. Because that was better than wandering around blindly.

And they managed to make it to something that looked like a train station without too much trouble. ‘There you are,’ the pale blue train yawned. ‘I was falling asleep waiting, you know.’

They stared. ‘Aren’t you the train we were on?’ Izumi frowned. ‘You know, before we found ourselves floating in mid air?’

                ‘Who knows?’ The train yawned again. ‘There were a lot of us and a lot of you. Can’t expect me to keep track of that many humans, can you? Least there’s only three of you this time. So who’s who?’ It blinked at them, headlights flickering.

                ‘Uhh… I’m Tomoki,’ Tomoki offered.

                ‘Angler,’ said the train proudly. ‘So you’re a Tomoki, huh.’

                ‘Just Tomoki.’

                ‘Just Tomoki, then.’

Junpei and Izumi exchanged glances, but figured simplicity was the easiest way to go.

                ‘Junpei.’

                ‘Izumi.’

                ‘So a Junpei, an Izumi and a Just Tomoki. Okay then.’

Tomoki made a noise that seemed like a cross between a giggle and a groan.

                ‘Hop on, humans. It’s a long trip to Flame Terminal but I’ve got loads of stories.’

                ‘How about starting with how a train can talk?’ Izumi suggested, impatient.

                ‘Oh, all digimon talk. And humans too, apparently. Do they all talk like you?’

…what in the world was a digimon?


	12. Affinity of Spirits

 

If the reason he was stuck as a water nymph for longer than he needed to be was so he could cure the kid his little brother’s age of his burns, then Takuya thought he could very well deal with that. So long as nobody burst out laughing.

They didn’t. They seemed more relieved than anything. The type of kids who didn’t find it amusing to see someone constantly wincing in pain.

He added two ticks each for his little mental checklist. One could tell a lot about a person in circumstances like this.

And then he toppled over because his head was spinning and how hadn’t he noticed that was going on before? He was shaking too. Didn’t realise that until he tried to get up again. Or when the tallest of the bunch offered him a hand and he tried to grab it –

But hey. His hand looked normal. Back to the good old gloves he’d dug out of his drawer.

That was, of course, well after “Angler the Trailmon Express” had dumped three passengers at his feet.

.

Their first meeting was both more and less awkward than it could have been. Izumi, the only girl amongst the five of them, found it amusing that a “big strong boy” had to be carried back, but Takuya thought he’d put in a good day’s work and wouldn’t let that shake her.

Which apparently earned him some ticks in her book too, even if it did seem like they’d clash a bit every now and then. Oh well, though. What were new friendships without a little spice?

And then there was Bokomon and Neemon – and at least Angler had been about as informative as Dark, so they were all on the same page in that regards. And then finally Kouichi – who probably raised the most surprise, considering how they’d filled Takuya’s goggles with leaves to keep the light out, and how his exposed skin glowed with scarlet burns.

Takuya wondered if he could have done something about that in the form of that water nymph, but they looked different, somehow. Light versus flames, perhaps. Different things and he’d never heard of water being good for light burns.

He couldn’t remember ever having come across light burns either, so maybe that was beside the point.

But now the seven of them were there, cramped into Bokomon and Neemon’s home and more knowledgeable than when they’d stepped onto the Trailmon but still rather confused about things.

And there was a book between them, that only Bokomon could read, that had the answers.

Or some of them, at least.

.

‘The ten legendary warrior spirits,’ Bokomon began, in the same manner one would begin a bedtime story in. ‘Legend tells they are the very foundations of this world. Light and darkness. Earth and air. Fire and water. Wood and metal. Thunder and ice. Ten elements that are send to govern life and death, creation and destruction. But after they created the world, they slumbered… And they entrusted the world to those they’d created to live upon it.’

                ‘So the ten legendary warriors were gods?’ Takuya wondered aloud. ‘There’s a god on earth like that, I think. Or several. The different interpretations make things confusing.’

The others shrugged. ‘I guess none of us are very religious,’ Tomoki said sheepishly. ‘But they do sound like gods, as opposed to warriors. They didn’t fight anything.’

Bokomon tsked at them. ‘Creation is a battle in itself,’ he schooled. ‘To make sure there are no holes, no cracks. And to create something self-sustaining is even more so… And yet…’

                ‘What?’ Takuya knew it was rude, but he wasn’t the most patient person in the world.

                ‘Well.’ Bokomon shrugged. ‘The world is in a strife, I suppose.’

                ‘You suppose?’ the children echoed.

                ‘Well.’ He shrugged again, a little helplessly. ‘It’s another legend, see. The warriors were themselves created by the thoughts of humans. Human children, to be exact. The simplistic views of the world they cast aside as they grew up. The dreams that slipped away, unfulfilled.’

                ‘That sounds really depressing.’

                ‘ _Takuya!_ ’

                ‘Okay, okay. I won’t interrupt anymore.’

Bokomon gave him a severe look, looking rather like a teacher in that moment. ‘See that you don’t, young man.’

                ‘I’m a kid.’ Takuya grumbled.

Izumi and Junpei glared as well.

                ‘Okay, okay.’ He was tempted to say more, but he refrained. It really did sound depressing to him, though.

                ‘As I was saying,’ Bokomon cleared his throat. ‘The legendary warriors were created from the thoughts of children – the thoughts that were lost as they grew into adulthood. So our origins, in turn, are from the human world. But none of us are as close to the human world, the human children, as the legendary warriors. And since they’ve slumbered since creating the world, legend says the day human children arrive here is when they’ll wake up once more.’

                ‘Legendary warriors waking up to greet a bunch of kids,’ Junpei snorted. ‘That’ll be the day.’ And then something clicked and he leaned forward, eyes wide. ‘You mean.’

                ‘You’re a clever one,’ Bokomon said approvingly. ‘Yes, the spirits you all carry with you are the legendary warrior spirits. Or five of the ten, in any case.’

                ‘I’m carrying the spirit of a warrior?’ Tomoki sounded perkier than he should have, Takuya thought, considering his spirit had burnt him… But he could allow the kid that excitement. He was pretty buffed, himself. Even if the gods had a weird sense of humour in giving him a water nymph.

Kouichi’s mind was on more practical matters… Or maybe he was disgruntled about his spirit burning him as well. ‘How did the sprits choose who got which one?’ he asked.

‘And for that matter,’ Junpei added after a slightly too long pause as the rest of them realigned their toughts, ‘how did it pick the five of us out of all the children who got on the trains?’

                ‘No point asking me,’ Bokomon shrugged. ‘I’m a book keeper. I know history, but this sort of thing has never happened before.’

                ‘Guess we’re stuck with these a little longer then,’ Izumi said thoughtfully. ‘I, for one, am glad mine showed up before we got eaten.’

                ‘I’m happy mine showed up before I got fried,’ Takuya agreed.

                ‘And before we drowned,’ Junpei added.

                ‘Mine’s nowhere near as glamorous,’ Tomoki pouted. ‘In fact, it made me get lost.’

Kouichi was silent until Izumi prodded him. ‘Kouichi?’

                ‘…we were looking for shade, somewhat ironically.’ After a pause, he added. ‘I wonder if that’s why my photosensitivity is so much worse, here.’

                ‘Light spirits, right?’ Takuya said sympathetically. ‘Between those and the light burns, it’s gotta be.’

Bokomon shrugged again. ‘While the legendary warrior spirits have never risen since the world’s creation, there have been a number of different types of digivolution through the ages.’ At their blank looks, he added: ‘Digivolution is the process of evolving into a stronger form. Sometimes it’s permanent. Other times it’s temporary for a purpose like battle, and we revert back to our prior forms once it’s over. But all digivolutions have requirements and there are digimon in the same species that digivolve differently because they meet different requirements. And then there are some who evolve in special ways – combining together in something we call Jogress, or using Digimentals – or even some who are freely able to switch between two forms and we call that Slide Evolution.’

Junpei drew a schematic on the ground as Bokmon talked. It was easier to follow that way. ‘So the normal digivolution process is kind of like growing older and stronger?’ he asked. ‘I guess that’s how kids in the same class can wind up in different professions, or something.’

                ‘Or something,’ Tomoki echoed, staring at Junpei’s diagram. ‘Really, we’re pretty different now.’

                ‘But we’re all students at the moment. So my example still works.’ And Junpei sounded pretty proud of that fact as well.

                ‘But why did we suddenly switch to digivolution?’ Takuya asked. ‘Weren’t we talking about how we were chosen for spirits that’ve been hurting some of us?’

                ‘And not giving us the option to switch back,’ Junpei added. ‘I was stuck as a walking gnome for ages.’

                ‘As I was saying,’ Bokomon replied, as though the transition was smooth… And maybe it was, to him, who could see where the train of thought would wind up. ‘Some of those special sorts of digivolutions aren’t as… smooth, as the natural ones. As though they’re forced. Or there’s an incompatibility. Naturally, if two digimon simply aren’t able to Jogress, they won’t, but sometimes there’s an in between state where it eats up their bodies.’

                ‘That doesn’t sound pleasant,’ said Neemon mildly.

Which was the understatement of the new world, Takuya thought. Being eaten alive because the spirits had messed up their choices didn’t sound like anything he’d want to put on his bucket list.

Not that he wanted a bucket list in the first place, but that was beside the point.

                ‘Can we swap?’ Junpei thought aloud. ‘I mean, if our spirits aren’t compatible with us, maybe they’re better with one of you guys.’

                ‘But how would we work that out?’ Izumi wondered aloud. ‘Trial and error?’

                ‘Fire for Takuya,’ Kouichi spoke up. ‘That’s how I first met him,’ he elaborated. ‘He was like this torchlight in the darkness.’

                ‘Didn’t help me see in there,’ Takuya snorted, and the others assumed the pair had travelled together for a bit as well. ‘But it’s as good a start as any. Tomoki?’

The two boys bent over their cell phones turned weird devices and mumbled. Izumi and Junpei watched them curiously and they assumed Kouichi was watching too… as well as he could, because they weren’t sure if he could see at all with his eyes covered, but it was infinitely better than having them burn in a light he couldn’t tolerate.

                ‘Aha,’ Tomoki said suddenly, and the two devices glowed simultaneously.

And then they sparked and fell to the floor with identical clutters, and the boys hurriedly checked them over to make sure they weren’t damaged.

They weren’t. But that was evidentially not the right button.

Or it was. Their screens glowed with new messages.

_Not yet._

                ‘Well,’ Junpei sighed, after they’d read that again. ‘I guess Kouichi was at least right about the spirits of fire being more compatible with Takuya.’

                ‘And we know there’s someone pulling the strings and giving us the wrong ones,’ Izumi added, looking thoughtfully at her own phone turned strange device. ‘That voice talking about tests and things… Is this a test too? We need to prove ourselves worthy with these spirits before we get the ones more compatible to us?’

                ‘Do we want them?’ Junpei countered. ‘Honestly, I’m happy finding the way back home. I’ve had more than enough crazy adventures.’

                ‘I dunno,’ Tomoki said thoughtfully. ‘The only adventure part was fighting that tree.’

                ‘A tree?’ Takuya laughed at that; it made quite a mental image. ‘The dog was way more exciting than that.’

.

She watched them. Five children together, trying to puzzle out the pieces and they were getting there.

She had to be cruel, knowing there was a spirit calling to its rightful owner there.

 _Not yet,_ she said to it softly. _Not yet._

Absence would make its heart grow fonder, she was sure.

But for now, they had to grow. Those children… They had to grow far, far, more.

And she wondered if they’d realise their next step by themselves, or if she’d guide them again.

Time would tell. And they still had that.

She waited.

.

Their conversation dawdled. No new message came and they tossed around the stories they already knew and tried to puzzle it out.

                ‘Recap,’ Junpei said again. He was their designated scribe – if only because of his habit of drawing pictorials to follow along. ‘I’ve got Grumblemon, the spirit of earth.’ Bokomon at least had been able to identify the spirits by name, after consulting his book. ‘Izumi has Arbormon, the spirit of wood. Tomoki has Agnimon: the spirit of fire. Takuya has Ranamon, the spirit of water, and Kouichi has Wolfmon, the spirit of light.’

They all nodded: a wave of heads bobbing up and down.

                ‘We all know we’ve got a spirit we’re not strictly compatible with. We also know that, of the spirits we do have, Takuya is compatible with Agnimon – or at least _more_ compatible. And ditto for Tomoki and Ranamon. We also known that none of the rest of us are compatible with each other’s spirits. Which means we must be one of the remaining spirits.’

                ‘Those are Shutumon, the warrior of wind,’ Bokomon recited, having found the page, ‘Chakkmon, the spirit of ice; Blitzmon, the spirit of thunder, Mercurimon, the spirit of metal, and Lowemon, the spirit of darkness.’

                ‘Judging from the whole night vision and photophobia,’ Junpei said thoughtfully, ‘I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume Kouichi’s probably meant to have the spirit of darkness. And it’s too bad we didn’t reach the glacier after all, because that would’ve been a good test for one of us.’

                ‘Maybe…’ Izumi said thoughtfully.

Tomoki beat her to it. ‘Izumi-san for wind,’ he said triumphantly. ‘You were the only one who could hear when the wind peaked and dipped.’

                ‘I was about to say that.’ She pouted, but conceded the point. It was the point that was important, after all.

                ‘Maybe electricity for me, in that vein,’ Junpei mused. ‘I’ve always liked electronics but I had no idea I could manage to link your phones up without wires, you know.’ He considered. ‘Then again, I really don’t like the thunder so maybe not.’

And they had no idea for Tomoki, either. And it was all conjecture anyway.

                ‘Maybe I’m ice,’ Tomoki said suddenly, staring at Junpei’s diagram.

                ‘How’d you figure?’ Izumi asked curiously, ‘because I don’t remember seeing any hint of that. Unless we’re talking about how you weren’t coughing out a lung full of water, because that seems more suggestive to _water_ to me and that “not yet” message… well, I suppose it could’ve been going only one way.’

                ‘I was just thinking…’ Tomoki flushed a little. ‘The ones we’re sure about: fire and water, and then light and darkness. They’re complete opposites. But fire and ice are opposites as well. So is any combination of water and earth and wind.’

                ‘So is wind and wood for that matter,’ Izumi agreed. ‘Do you think we’ve been given the opposite of the spirit we’re compatible with?’

That made a lot of sense, looking at the ones they’d guessed for themselves.

And that also meant it was going to be pretty painful dealing with them, because no way they were going to be a perfect match for the spirit opposite to the ones that had chosen them.

.

She had to colour herself impressed. They were pretty close, in the end. One on the second try and one dismissed, but otherwise correct and it mattered and didn’t matter both. Because they still had to master their weaknesses: their weaker selves. They still had to master ill-fitting spirits.

And they would master them, in time. Now that they were in the digital world, bound to spirits…

And, before that, bound to the messages she’d sent them.

Things that should be questioned would not be – or they’d proceed nonetheless. It was like a trance: something hypnotic that pulled them in. The spirits were a drug like that. Adventure was like a drug. She didn’t have to worry about them leaving this world behind because they’d never do that. She knew. She’d seen. That wasn’t what she was afraid of.

Humans were just so breakable.

Hopefully she could make their skin something tough so they wouldn’t wind up breaking this time.


	13. Failing the Tests

 

At some point, Kouichi managed to piece together the fact that only he hadn’t gotten the message of passing the second test – and that was only after Takuya mentioned the loss of his cell phone games and that the messages were now coming on the devices they’d transformed into.

The same device that rested in his over-shirt pocket now. His fingers lightly brushed it. Large and uncomfortable, and yet in a world where he couldn’t open his eyes to look, everything was big and uncomfortable, wasn’t it?

And now they were dawdling. They had no idea what to do and they were going over things they’d already talked about, just for the sake of a conversation topic.

And then even that was discarded. ‘Oh, let’s just kick back. Tell me more about yourselves.’

Takuya… Breaking the awkward silence again. He seemed gifted at that. The torch in the darkness. It had been a careless description on his part but it described him well. And they were probably right in that darkness fit him as well.

Look at him now, not even willing to open his eyes.

He sighed.

                ‘Why do you think we don’t have instructions now?’ Junpei mused aloud, when they’d exhausted that conversation topic too and right on queue.

                ‘I think…’ He began. The others were silent. They’d picked up on that quirk of his already. ‘It’s because I haven’t passed yet. The second test.’

                ‘The second..?’ Takuya blinked. ‘You didn’t get a message?’

He shook his head.

                ‘You didn’t transform into a weird thing and then change back in the time I was fighting that three headed dog?’

He shook his head again.

                ‘Oh. Whoops.’

The other three stared. ‘Why would you assume something like that?’ Since they could be forgiven for not knowing how much time they’d spent together or apart.

                ‘So now we wait for another life-threatening something or other to occur and let you have it?’ Junpei asked. ‘I’ll say I’m just glad it’s not me.’

                ‘Ditto,’ Izumi agreed. ‘Though I guess it’s not very nice in retrospect.’

                ‘I think…’ Kouichi said again. ‘If Takuya and I had gone together, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.’

                ‘Or not.’ Takuya shrugged. ‘It’s not like we had a neat pair of instructions to go by. It’s whoever made up this weird game that should have told us.’

                ‘It’s not a game!’ Bokomon cried, affronted. ‘You must save this world. You must.’

                ‘We can’t save a world if we’re walking blind,’ Kouichi pointed out flatly – especially since, in his case, he was quite literally walking blind.

.

They wound up sleeping there: cramped but probably far safer than the outside. Or the others did. The heater never went out and so it never really went dark and even with his eyes covered, Kouichi was too wound up to get to sleep.

His circadian rhythms didn’t like this town one bit.

And he knew it was a poor choice to wander outside. But it was uncomfortable. And he’d crash hard tomorrow if he couldn’t get to sleep and it always worked at home: walking about in the dark apartment with all the curtains drawn so the street lamps couldn’t creep in. Except here the street lamps were compressed into the heater and the dark place that escaped that would be where they found the spirit of light in the first place. That place under the forest.

No-one even saw him go. Or he didn’t think so anyway. No-one called after him. No-one followed him either. It was just him: quiet footsteps crunching leaves as his reaching fingers lost walls to feel and found trunks instead.

And then he realised he had no idea how to find that entrance anyway.

He peeked out from under Takuya’s goggles. The light burned and his eyes watered immediately, but he could see a little. Blurry shapes. Hopefully a hole in the ground would be prominent enough. If he kept his back to the town, it should be enough.

It didn’t wind up mattering because the ground gave way under his feet instead.

He fell and rolled down stairs and it was terrifyingly dizzy and terrifyingly familiar.

.

Ofanimon watched. The boy had wandered away on his own. Perhaps he’d instinctively known what he had to do: what was still left. Or maybe that was his nature: wandering when there was even a hint of light and only finding comfort in true darkness. Because he was a perfect fit for the darkness, really.

No wonder the light burned him so.

But he had to soldier through it. Of all the children, he was the strongest and the most fragile and she had no idea why: no idea why he was so different from the others because he only seemed less complex than them. As though something had brushed off the loose threads that clung to him and everything about him was raw and pure and unsullied by day to day life…

She wondered if that was what death did to a person. She wouldn’t know. Digimon did not taste true death like humans did but humans changed with the death of people close to them, didn’t they? They seemed to, anyway. She only ever saw examples through these children and as for him: he was always like that, and very often the one who was sacrificed in the end. The most transparent of them, the most easily fitted… Light and darkness were the key but nowhere did it say one of them had to die for that power to come alive? Nowhere… And yet it happened. Far too many times. And it was a wasted sacrifice in the end because the world couldn’t regrow on that spilt blood.

So he had to overcome it. Whatever it was he carried from possibility to possibility to make him so likely to die. He had to overcome it to survive the endgame, and if that meant he had to suffer in the opening hands, then so be it.

And after that would be a new hurdle, with Cherubimon.

Light and darkness… The two of them had the most hurdles to jump through, because they were the key.

.

Kouichi groaned and opened his eyes. The goggles had slipped or else off and the side of his head throbbed as though he’d struck it against the edge of a stair. He probably had. It was still too bright. His eyes still watered and he could see nothing but indescript blurs but he felt around.

The glasses were in one piece. Good.

He was still on stairs. That part wasn’t so good, but it was manageable. He crawled along the width, searching for the world and then dragged himself up. His legs shook a bit but otherwise held him up. Good.

And as he made his way in deeper, he could make out more things.

There wasn’t all that much to make out, really. Rows of stone making up the wall and the floor. And they went on and on and on and he wondered where they were even going?

He figured it out eventually, when he finally reached the end of the staircase and saw other staircases climbing down… Or climbing up.

All the stairs converged in this one place. A place with a hole in the floor.

Was that where the spirits had been?

He peered over the edge. Black. Pure black. But he could see something else as well. Something white. He could hear it too, now that he wasn’t moving anymore. Something swishing about in the darkness.

                ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘I’m sorry to disturb, but –‘

And something suddenly emerged from the darkness and swallowed him.

.

It was pure darkness now, but it just didn’t feel right. It was too small for one, and he wasn’t a claustrophobic person by nature. He couldn’t walk in this though. He couldn’t even stand up: stuck crouching and feeling the walls. Six dimensions. He really was boxed in.

His heart hammered. He wasn’t claustrophobic by nature but he was really and truly trapped here. Looking for darkness. Unable to sleep in the same room as the others and that would have been infinitely more comfortable, infinitely safe…

_But you’re more comfortable alone, right?_

Was that true? he wondered. Wasn’t it the light? But it was true he wasn’t much of a people person. He preferred to stay in their warm company and silent: part and yet apart from the crowd. Not standing in the spotlight. Not left behind in shadows but rather wrapped in them. That wasn’t alone. That wasn’t company either. Was that, then, just him taking the middle ground?

But was he more comfortable alone? No, definitely not.

He really shouldn’t have gone off on his own, especially when he knew full well he was handicapped. Even now, his eyes burned. Even when there was no light at all. And for all that light burned, he needed at least a dash of it to see.

_Light…_

_Pack…_

He needed light.

His heart began to beat even faster. Faster until it burned, and until the inside of his mouth began to burn as well, trying to breathe in enough air. His fingers found something and grasped it. His eyes went from seeing black to seeing white and they burned but everything was burning now so it didn’t really matter.

Something cracked and split apart, and suddenly the confining orb was gone and he could stand straight again. Something swished around him. He could hear them, and see their shadows dancing on the white wall he painted.

He reached for them. Pierced them straight through with whatever it was he held.

                ‘That’s Phantomon,’ said Bokomon’s awed voice from somewhere nearby. So they’d followed after all. ‘Don’t let him catch - ’

Something tore. And then the blinding light settled and so did the white on the wall.

.

                ‘You sure fall unconscious on me a lot, you know,’ Takuya said, sounding amused.

Kouichi took that to mean Takuya had spotted something in his face or hands or something that told him he’d been waking up, otherwise that comment would’ve been pretty useless.

                ‘You missed one,’ he said instead. His head still throbbed but someone had put some sort of paste on it. His hands came away sticky, anyway, and he was pretty sure that wasn’t blood.

                ‘Yeah, and you fall down a flight of stairs or something when I do. What were you even doing?’

                ‘Trying to get to sleep.’ Which sounded rather silly, now that he said it. He’d fallen unconscious twice in that interim, after all. But he was feeling somewhat rested so one of those had probably been accompanied by a much needed nap. ‘The heater’s too much like the sun.’

He cracked his eyes open now. They burned, but it was like a dull echo than something new and fed. He blinked a few times. Yep, he could see pretty clearly now. Izumi was naturally the only girl: the blonde with green eyes. Which left Tomoki and Junpei. He’d figure out which one was which when they spoke, he supposed.

                ‘By the way, what happened?’

                ‘I got stuck in some sort of orb,’ Kouichi took Takuya’s proffered hand and sat up and shrugged. ‘And then everything began burning.’

                ‘We found burn paste,’ Tomoki – so he was the smaller one – said. ‘It’s not perfect on the sort of burns you seem to have, but it should help.’

                ‘It does help,’ said Kouichi, who noticed they ached but didn’t sting at all – and he could put up with aches. ‘Thank you.’

                ‘You’re welcome,’ Tomoki said brightly.

Amazing what a single thank you could do.

                ‘The orb was Phantomon’s,’ Bokomon explained. ‘He has a nasty habit of catching digimon in there – and they never come out. You must have turned into Wolfmon to break the orb and escape it. That must have been the burning you felt. But when you just stood there after that…’

                ‘I couldn’t see,’ Kouichi explained. He seemed to be doing that a lot here. Not being able to see. Everything was white – but the… Phantomon? Was like a shadow in the white so all I had to do was pin it down.’

                ‘Well, you certainly did that,’ Izumi said. ‘You’d be great a Pin the Tail on the Donkey.’

                ‘Maybe.’ He’d never actually tried it.

                ‘We should do that some time. Too bad my birthday’s already passed.’

                ‘My little brother’s is… yesterday. Oh crap.’ Takuya groaned. ‘I missed the cake and ice cream!’

They all laughed, but the laughter was muted at thoughts of home. They’d been gone all night now, without a word to their families. What would they be thinking? Were they worried? Scared?

And how long until they could get back home? How many more tests to get through, stages to pass? When would they open the final gate?

                ‘ _Congratulations.’_ The message came from the device in Kouichi’s over-shirt this time. ‘ _You’ve passed the second test. Now only one of you remains to try it.’_

                ‘Remains?’ Junpei echoed. ‘What happened to everybody else? There were hundreds of us!’

                ‘ _Those who passed remained,_ ’ the voice explained. ‘ _Those who failed have returned to their world. All that remains in this one final person to take their trial.’_

 _‘_ Who?’ Takuya, this time.

                ‘ _Minamoto Kouji… To earn the first handshake of the spirit of darkness.’_

Kouichi’s eyes widened so much they _hurt_. But he couldn’t help that. ‘Kouji?’ Of all the people it could have been.

He didn’t know if it was good or bad, really, that he could still try and reach him in this world.

Because the one who missed the other opportunities was he himself, wasn’t it?


	14. Barren Road (Junpei)

 

Kouichi didn’t say anything, but it was pretty obvious from the expression on his face that this “Minamoto Kouji” meant something to him. And a part of Junpei wanted to call him out on it – but the other boy looked so uncomfortable that he took pity on him. Instead, he said: ‘We should catch up with him. It must suck being all on your own – especially since the five of us are together.’

                ‘It definitely would,’ Takuya agreed. ‘I mean, we were alone for a bit before we met up and it definitely sucked. I’d still be wandering around in that pitch black place if Kouichi hadn’t caught me.’

                ‘Caught you?’ Tomoki asked. ‘Why? Were you falling too?’

Apparently, they still needed to straighten out their stories, but they’d gotten the gist of it down pat anyway. At least he’d been with Tomoki and Izumi the entire time, even if they’d lost contact for a moment in between and, for a longer moment, could only communicate with their phones. Those two hadn’t gotten on the train together. It was a miracle they’d stumbled onto each other at all by the sounds of it…

No, that wasn’t true when one took into account Kouichi’s amazing night vision (and terrible day vision).

                ‘How do you even get around normally?’ he asked, curiously and probably a little bluntly, in retrospect – especially if Izumi’s elbow was anything to go by.

                ‘It’s not usually this bad,’ Kouichi admitted, after a moment and rubbing his eyes. He lowered them almost immediately, as though remembering rubbing eyes wasn’t good for them in the least. ‘Sunny winter days are the worst, since it’s winter. Winter days aren’t supposed to be sunny.’ He was pouting slightly. Junpei could only tell because he was unashamedly staring. ‘But I can get by even that with squinting and a headache.’

Which was kind of what he was doing then, as they crept slowly into the forest surrounding the town. Bokomon and Neemon called it Flame Terminal. Probably after the massive heater in town.

Well, at least that meant he could sort of see with Takuya’s goggles on, even if he was going to slow them down regardless. And come in handy when none of the rest of them would be able to see. That was a handy trick and maybe it was even worth the price – though Junpei was sure he’d have to pay a price like that before he could say so for himself. Still, that was something that made him stand out. Junpei had only stood out when he’d been stuck as a dwarf and now they realised they could all change – and not one of them had been stuck as long as him.

He wouldn’t be saving the day again anytime soon, apparently.

Which was just fine. He wasn’t the type of guy who went around saving the day anyway.

.

_Then head to the Dark Continent. You will find him there._

That was what Ofanimon told them, and then there was a moment of panic from Bokomon upon hearing the name but their mysterious voice from the device didn’t answer them. Or Bokomon’s concerns – which turned out to be quite legitimate.

A place where no-one who went in came back out sounded like a place they should stay far away from.

On the other hand, it sounded like a place they couldn’t leave a fellow human in, especially with the way Kouichi’s face in particular grew paler with Bokomon’s dramatics.

This time, it was Takuya who stepped up. Takuya who probably didn’t even realise the expressions around him aside from Bokomon’s, and that was only because Bokomon was so loud. ‘We can’t leave a fellow human there, right? And Bokomon, don’t you think it’d be cool to be the first person to write all about this continent no-one’s ever explored before?’

Which turned out to be quite the effective strategy to convince Bokomon. Curiosity was what made him follow Takuya in a place he knew danger awaited. Curiosity was what was now warming him up to the idea of going to the Dark Continent when he knew full well no-one had ever come out of it.

And that really didn’t sound like the sort of place they should be going, even if Takuya was right and they couldn’t, in all good conscience, leave someone there.

What a pain their conscience could be, sometimes. They could have gone home and been on their merry way back through meandering lives if it hadn’t been for that. And if they actually knew the way back home.

And if they hadn’t gotten that message to begin with and following along like little sheep following the shepherd who, for all they knew, could have been a nasty wolf in disguise.

Still could be, for all they know, except the mysterious voice on the phone that was no longer a phone had guided them to weapons to defend themselves: weapons – according to Bokomon and Neemon – akin to knights, or gods.

                ‘All in favour, raise your hand!’

Junpei couldn’t find himself too surprised to note his was the last hand up… Even if not by much.

                ‘Motion carried!’ Takuya threw a punch to the air in celebration. Izumi snickered. Tomoki looked excited. Kouichi’s expression was harder to read now… But weren’t any of them worried? Or uncomfortable with the idea of playing hero?

.

Past the Flame Terminal was a lot of barren land, and Bokomon lamented the lack of Trailmon to carry them over it. ‘Really,’ he complained, ‘there’s absolutely nothing to see here and no landmarks in the least so we have to make very sure we’re going straight and stay in the same direction until we reach Forest Terminal and hope there’s a Trailmon there.’

                ‘Can’t we just wait at the Flame Terminal for a Trailmon to come?’ Junpei asked. ‘If we keep on walking from station to station, there’s no guarantee we’re going to catch one, and trains come fairly frequently. It’ll be… what? Half an hour at the most?’

                ‘Trailmons don’t run according to such predictable times,’ Bokomon sniffed. ‘Honestly, they may never come back to Flame Terminal. What made it a Terminal in the first place was the presence of the spirits. Trailmon are a special sort. They’re said to be the noble steeds of the warriors, and without them they dash between one spirit and the next. The rest of us use them for convenience but they’re not there for us.’

                ‘They’re not?’ Neemon blinked. ‘But when they’re there, we don’t have to walk.’

                ‘As I said,’ Bokomon sighed, ‘we can use them for our own convenience provided we’re both going in the same direction at the same time. But they’re not exactly obliged to carry us from one place to another.’

                ‘And the weirdest thing,’ Junpei mumbled, ‘is the fact that they’ve got minds of their own.’

And none of the other humans could argue with that, since they all came from a world where trains were unthinking machines.

Things were certainly going to be interesting once they got back to their own world.

.

They reached the end of the road surprisingly quickly, though not in the way they’d imagined.

This end of the road translated to a missing bridge. And as none of them had wings – even if they did know how to change back and forth between their spirits and human selves – so they were stuck.

                ‘I wonder how the Trailmon made it over the gap,’ Bokomon mused, staring at how the tracks broke off, and then continued on the other side of the ravine.

They all looked down at that, as though they’d see the absurd sign of tracks going all the way down and back up again. And why not? They’d seen some unbelievable things. But there were no tracks going there. No path for them to walk either and though Takuya wanted to try climbing down, Tomoki balked at the very idea and saved the rest of them.

So they followed the edge until they found a path that looed reasonably safe, and then they descended.

Takuya marched ahead, looking a little disgruntled now and Tomoki was keeping pretty close. Hero worship at its best, Junpei thought – and maybe that was a little bitter of him, but Takuya was the one who’d wanted to try a climb it was doubtful any of them could manage. Maybe Takuya was the type who was good at sports, but that didn’t say anything about the rest of them. And even if the five of them could manage it, he didn’t see Neemon, with his red socks, getting a secure foothold at all.

He was being careless. And he wasn’t the only one but at least Kouichi had admitted to his carelessness and… Well, he hadn’t had the chance to wander off again, so Junpei couldn’t really say if he would. And in any case, he could understand wanting some breathing space and he’d been the one most in danger. Carelessness that endangered oneself was pretty different to carelessness that would endanger someone else.

Or maybe he was feeling insecure with these guys.

Or with himself. Because that gigantic hammer he had earlier was going to be more of a detriment than a help in an enclosed space like the ravine. And he didn’t like enclosed spaces, either. Or dark places. Or storms.

Now that he thought about it, he had quite a long list of things he didn’t like.

                ‘What are you thinking about?’ Izumi asked curiously, from just behind him. ‘You’ve got such a serious look on your face.’

                ‘Thinking about how woefully inadequate I’m suddenly feeling, now that we’re all on the same page.’

She laughed, surprisingly. He stopped and stared at her a moment before Takuya turned back and realised they weren’t following and called for them to hurry up.

But still, her laughing had caught him by surprise. She didn’t seem like that sort of person.

                ‘You’re giving me one of those looks.’ The laughter was suddenly gone from her voice. ‘I’m not laughing at you for feeling like that, you know.’

                ‘O-oh,’ he stuttered, before clearing his throat. ‘It’s just – well –‘

                ‘It sounded like that?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘Fair enough. That was poor timing on my part. I was just laughing because you had odd timing, yourself.’

                ‘Huh?’ He blinked, then stared at her some more. What was so odd about his timing?

                ‘Well, you were the one who was stuck as a dwarf the longest,’ she pointed out. ‘Why now, in the middle of being yourself again?’

                ‘It’s precisely that I’m in the middle of being myself again,’ he explained. ‘Shibayama Junpei isn’t anyone special.’

                ‘Hmm…’ She said. ‘Is that so? Because you have to be something special to be here, by the sounds of anything. And how can a no-one special hack a phone with just another phone, anyway? You’ve tried to explain it at least twice and it still blows my mind away.’

Junpei shrugged, but something inside of him was swelling a little happily. ‘I like electronics,’ he said. ‘Electronics and magic tricks: my two specialties.’

She laughed again. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘And if you asked what my specialties are, I’d say Italian and deserts and rubbing my classmates the wrong way.’

He stared at her for that, as well. ‘Rubbing your classmates the wrong way?’ he echoed. ‘Judging from the last few minutes, it seems like a series of misunderstandings at play.’

                ‘Not really.’ She shrugged, her long hair bouncing on her shoulders and she walked a little faster. ‘They all know each other, and have expectations about how their friends should behave. I just don’t fit them.’

Junpei could understand that. He couldn’t seem to fit in with his classmates either. However he was acting, it wasn’t quite the same for them.

But for five random kids tossed together, that was far less of a problem, wasn’t it?

.

They reached the bottom of the ravine, or as far as they could go without diving into the river that flowed there. They followed that for a bit because surely there’d be a place where the river was shallow enough or there were stepping stones or something that would allow them to cross.

There was, but they were accosted by floating candles called Candlemon who wouldn’t let them pass. And there were mixed reactions between the five of them and that didn’t bode well at all for their success.

It also didn’t help that Takuya, who’d stepped forward eagerly, was actually their best bet at taking down a bunch of fire-tossing candles. After all, he was a water nymph – even if he did look rather ridiculous transforming into one.

…well, at least they knew they could transform on command, now. Even if it didn’t look like just Takuya was going to be enough. ‘I can handle it,’ he’d keep on tossing back, though. ‘I’m fine. You guys should get going.’

                ‘We can’t,’ Tomoki protested, but his own spirit was fire and useless in this battle. No sense adding more fuel to the flames, after all. Izumi was similarly stuck and frowning at the battle… Actually, she was worse off. Wood could _catch_ fire. And maybe she was thinking about their chat earlier. Or maybe not. He didn’t ask, so who knew.

Junpei thought about his own spirit. Earth couldn’t catch fire that easily, even if he didn’t have room to swing. What else could that dwarf do? He hadn’t felt anything. Strength, and a hammer. That’s all he could bring to mind. A hammer that smashed into the water and found the land…

He blinked. The hammer swung up, then back down. He did have space for that, just not to swing the hammer all around.

He took out that strange device his phone had become. And realised he wasn’t the only one.

                ‘No,’ he said firmly, and Kouichi looked at him, startled. He was wearing Takuya’s goggles around his neck now, since the ravine blocked out the sun. But underneath his shirt was still that burn paste Tomoki had rubbed on. ‘You’re still injured, remember? And I can fight too. If we’re both getting our butts kicked, then that’s another story because you’re literally the only one who’ll be left and not have a disadvantage against a bunch of fire candles, but for now…’

And he’d just volunteered to fight. What was he thinking?

But the words were out of him now, and they made all that more sense out loud.

He swallowed and transformed. He grew, and with that came the feeling of strength as well. He could do something. He wasn’t powerless in this enclosed space after all. He wasn’t powerless at all.

He swung the hammer. It caught the nearest Candlemon sand slammed him into the water… And tossed the water up too. And this time he got to pay more attention. The way the water split apart. The way the bridge in the distance made itself known. The way the Candlemon groaned and dissolved into data, while Takuya hit the other two. And the data floated up and Junpei felt bad, at that moment, because they’d just been defending themselves against their intrusion, right? It was a really harsh world –

But then he followed the data up and realised they were reforming the bridge, and he was just plain confused. _How does that work?_

Bokomon had an ever-ready explanation. ‘The data of the digital world is in shambles. Once things are put right, then everything will be right again.’

So bits of data had turned from structural components of the world into digimon causing trouble, if he understood that correctly.

                ‘That was a lot faster, this time round,’ Tomoki said.

Junpei looked at himself. He was back to being a human, and so was Takuya, though he seemed to be grumbling about something.

                ‘You clearly needed help,’ he heard Izumi snap. ‘And if Junpei didn’t, Kouichi would’ve. And if my spirits wouldn’t have caught fire with that bunch of candles, I would’ve too.’

                ‘I wasn’t outmatched,’ Takuya protested. ‘I could’ve handled them. See? I don’t even have a scratch.’

                ‘You don’t,’ Kouichi said quietly, cutting across Izumi’s tirade – and the only reason Junpei heard his voice was because he and Tomoki had caught up to the others by that point. ‘But what would we have done without evolving with the one that got past you?’

Junpei blinked. He hadn’t noticed that at all… Though he wondered if Kouichi meant the one he’d knocked down. He’d just gone for the nearest, not even gauging _how_ near it had been.

                ‘They’re just a bunch of candles.’ But Takuya’s protest sounded just a little weaker.

                ‘Burns hurt,’ Kouichi replied. ‘Tomoki can tell you too.’

And Tomoki looked uncomfortable at being put on the spot like that, but he nodded.

And Takuya wilted. ‘It’s so much easier to fight just one opponent.’

                ‘It usually is,’ Junpei agreed. ‘But that’s why there’s five of us. It’s not a weakness to need your friends fighting with you.’

Takuya stared at him.

He shifted. ‘We are friends, right?’

A slow grin. ‘Of course we are. Right?’

 


	15. Crossing the Bridge (Takuya)

 

Okay, so it seemed rather stupid in retrospect but a few candles shouldn’t have been hard for a water nymph to handle at all. Especially when his fingertips felt like they could call clouds to fill the entire ravine if he wanted to. Which wasn’t a bright idea with four other humans and two non-aquatic digimon and who knew what else _inside_ the ravine, but he could do it.

But Kouichi was right, when he stopped to think about it. The one Junpei had hammered had slipped past him and if they’d noticed that after the fact, would any of them evolved fast enough to do something about it? The reason Junpei had missed it himself was because he was already part-way through his transformation, right?

                ‘Everyone has a blindspot,’ Kouichi said quietly.

They were walking along the ravine again. The bridge above them was ready, and yet they were worried. Or just curious. Izumi and Junpei were talking about something or other – a continuation of their earlier discussion, it seemed. And Tomoki was skipping between the two pairs and catching snippets of both… Though until Kouichi spoke up, there hadn’t been much of a conversation after Takuya fell silent and they’d started moving on.

                ‘How do you mean?’ Takuya asked.

                ‘Do you want the scientific explanation or the simple one?’ Kouichi asked in return, somewhat teasingly. ‘Humans don’t have three hundred and sixty degree vision, and we’re not so quick as to be able to process everything we _do_ see, either.’

                ‘…I have no idea where you’re going with that,’ Takuya replied.

                ‘Nowhere, really.’ Kouichi shrugged. ‘Just that one person can’t see everything, and they don’t need to when there’s someone else to cover for them. But if everyone’s looking at the same place, something can slip past anyway. Having different skills and covering different bases are two of the biggest advantages of being in a team and there’s no reason to not use them.’

                ‘Right.’ Takuya sighed. ‘That makes so much sense, you know.’

                ‘I hope so.’ Kouichi offered a small smile.

Takuya smiled back. ‘This is one of those me being reckless moments, isn’t it?’

                ‘Being brave isn’t a bad thing,’ Tomoki piped up.

                ‘Being reckless is sort of like crossing the line,’ Kouichi explained. ‘Bravery in moderation with carefulness… But even following that, we can only guess where the line is.’ He shrugged again. ‘Well, all of that is really easy to say, but putting it into practice…’

                ‘Like wandering off in the middle of the night?’ Takuya grinned. He was probably taking it better from Kouichi for that reason, or maybe it was because they’d spent a little more time together.

                ‘I couldn’t sleep!’ Kouichi protested.

But no harm, no foul, and they could keep these lessons in mind for the next time… Hopefully.

                ‘I kind of wish my brother explained things like that,’ Tomoki spoke up, changing the topic somewhat.

Takuya rubbed the back of his head. ‘I probably should, too,’ he agreed. ‘Being the older brother and all.’

                ‘You mentioned him before… Shinya-kun, was it?’ Tomoki asked. ‘How old is he?’

                ‘Nine, yesterday.’ They day they’d arrived in this world, assuming they hadn’t lost any days in the darkness or up in the air.

                ‘About the same as me,’ Tomoki said quietly. ‘How about you, Kouichi? Do you have any siblings?’

Kouichi seemed to stop short at that – which made both Takuya and Tomoki stare at him because that was a perfectly harmless question, wasn’t it? ‘Er, well... My parents are divorced.’ That last bit came out in a bit of a rush, but they all grasped it – even Izumi and Junpei who’d finished up their own conversation.

                ‘So you have a brother, but they live separately from you?’

                ‘I guess you could say that…’ Kouichi looked up, something he’d been avoiding since they’d come into the ravine, and shielded his eyes with a hand. ‘I don’t remember him at all… And he probably doesn’t either.’

                ‘Remember?’ Tomoki echoed. ‘Like you guys don’t talk to each other much, or…’

                ‘Or you’ve never met each other since your parents split up however many years ago?’ Izumi offered, in the silence that followed Tomoki’s theory.

                ‘Never met,’ Kouichi admitted. ‘Didn’t even know I had a twin brother until… my grandmother passed away.’

The way he said it made it sound recent, and they all echoed an apology which Kouichi didn’t really seem to notice. He was thinking about something else entirely. That brother he’d never met. ‘And then all there was was a name. So I looked. And found him, and my father too and I’ve barely got any photos of him and ‘kaa-san and ‘baa-chan barely talked about him so I don’t know him either, but there they were…’

                ‘And you couldn’t go up to them and break that scene, right?’ Junpei asked. At the surprised look, he shrugged. ‘I don’t think I need to know you terribly well to figure that part out.’

                ‘Or maybe we know each other better in about a day than we do the classmates we’ve spent years with, simply because of circumstances,’ Izumi countered. ‘As it is, I can’t imagine my family being like that. Even if my parents split up, I don’t think either would be happy with never seeing me again. And it’s not a requirement of the Japanese courts, is it?’

                ‘It depends,’ Kouichi said, probably the only one amongst them who had some insight into that. ‘Joint custody isn’t legally recognised but that doesn’t stop the parents from working something out amongst themselves. But even then it would be a really fragile agreement. One word from the parent who has custody and the other would be legally barred from their child –‘

                ‘That’s terrible.’ Izumi grimaced. ‘So if a child wants to go visit their other parent, the parent who has custody on them can get the other parent in a lot of trouble, even if it’s not even their fault. And despite that, forcing parents to stay apart –‘

                ‘And when you throw multiple children into the equation, it’s even more complicated, right?’ Junpei asked. ‘Like… Does one parent get all the kids, or are they split up, and what’s the legalities around allowing them to meet?’

Kouichi shrugged. ‘In our case, it was one parent takes one child and that’s the end of the story. And we were young enough that we – or I anyway – eventually forgot about having a brother entirely. And I wasn’t really interested in seeking my father out… until… well…’

                ‘I must confess myself utterly confused,’ Bokomon admitted. ‘We are all single parents here, in the digital world. Whyever is a second one even necessary?’

                ‘That doesn’t leave much room for romance,’ Izumi frowned. ‘That’s a bit of a shame, isn’t it?’

They shrugged, and settled into silence again.

                ‘I’m sorry I asked,’ Tomoki piped up, after a moment. ‘I didn’t mean to dig up anything –‘

                ‘I should have mentioned it earlier,’ Kouichi acquiesced. ‘I just –‘

                ‘Minamoto Kouji, right?’

This time, Kouichi stopped walking entirely. They all stared at Junpei. ‘What? It’s not that big of a stretch.’

                ‘How’d you figure?’ Takuya wandered. He didn’t see it at all. Kouichi saying he should have mentioned it earlier. What relevance did that have with – oh.

The only reason it would be relevant was if said brother was here, or someone they knew. And they hadn’t really been tossing names about, except Shinya’s and Tomoki’s older brother, so it probably wasn’t that.

He turned back to Kouichi. ‘That’s an odd coincidence.’

                ‘I wonder if it really is,’ Bokomon said, and they all looked down at him. ‘Well, digimon siblings are very different from human siblings, but human siblings share the same code, right?’

                ‘If by code you mean DNA,’ Junpei said thoughtfully, ‘then the amount two siblings share could really be anywhere between zero and a hundred percent. Both siblings get half their DNA from their mother and half from their father, so if their halves are completely independent, you get zero. If they’re exactly the same, you get a hundred. If they’re identical twins, you get a hundred – oh. Are you fraternal or identical twins?’

                ‘…no idea,’ said Kouichi, who the question had been aimed at.

                ‘So improved chances for being at the hundred percent end of the spectrum, but no guarantee,’ Junpei surmised.

                ‘…humans are terribly complicated,’ Bokomon decided.

                ‘What were you going to say?’ Tomoki asked curiously. ‘About siblings being alike?’

                ‘Ah.’ Bokomon shook his head. ‘I explained the relationship between the spirits, right? How water puts out fire, and fire melts ice, for example.’

                ‘And we filled in the gaps ourselves,’ Junpei agreed, ‘though I suppose you could say you explained it.’

                ‘Well, light and darkness are special,’ Bokomon pressed on. ‘While you can say fire creates light, or woods stifle it thereby creating darkness, or metal reflects light and water reflects darkness… You can say all those things, but when it comes to the foundations of the world, light and darkness stand separate to the other eight elements.’

                ‘Meaning?’ they asked, confused.

                ‘Meaning,’ Bokomon puffed out his chest, as though about to impart some great piece of wisdom. ‘Light and darkness came first and created the empty world, and then the other eight elements populated it… Or so the legend goes.’

                ‘Light and darkness?’ Kouichi repeated. ‘That sounds a little like the big bang. All matter can be traced back to a singularity within the vast expanse of nothing – that is, darkness. Then that singularity expanded and created the world.’

                ‘It was something like that?’ Takuya wondered aloud. ‘Amazing.’ He could barely visualise it: how a small dot of light in the darkness could create an entire universe. ‘But what does that have to do with the warriors?’

                ‘They’re a representation of the world’s balance,’ Bokomon said, in the air of someone repeating himself. ‘In other words, light and darkness are the key to the world. So maybe the holders of them being siblings – twins, you said – isn’t a coincidence.’

                ‘Fate, then?’ Takuya asked, interested. That did sound like the stuff that came out of animes or those MMO games. ‘Though considering the number of children that had to be filtered through the first time around…’

                ‘Yeah, doesn’t point to fate choosing us but rather us doing the best job at these… trials,’ Izumi agreed.

                ‘Well…’ Takuya sighed, in the lull, ‘I’m glad we haven’t messed it up yet.’ And it was a credit to the other five that they didn’t call him out on that comment, he thought. And so he pressed on. ‘By the way, Kouichi.’

                ‘Hmm?’               

                ‘When we run into Kouji, we’ll give you a nice big push of support. How about it?’

And he gave the other a friendly push to emphasise the point – but Kouichi hadn’t been prepared for it and toppled into the river with a shriek.

                ‘Takuya,’ he spluttered, coming up almost immediately and grabbing the bank.

Takuya bent over, laughing. ‘Sorry,’ he choked. ‘That was an accident. Honest.’

But the others were laughing too, even Kouichi once he was over the initial surprise. ‘When you do give me a push,’ he said. ‘Try to make sure there’s no river next time.’

                ‘That’s not up to me,’ Takuya said innocently.   

                ‘Still,’ Izumi scolded, ‘you should be more aware of your surroundings. We’ll have to reapply that burn paste now.’ She paused. ‘Kouichi, is something wrong?’

Kouichi wasn’t pulling himself over the bank but rather looking into the water. ‘There’s something down there,’ he said, squinting. ‘Something glowing. I can’t really make it out.’

Junpei grabbed Takuya by the collar as the other made to dive in. ‘We’ve got one wet person,’ he said. ‘That’s enough.’ He paused. ‘You can swim, right?’

                ‘Sure.’ And Kouichi took a deep breath and ducked under for a closer look. He popped up again after a minute or so. ‘It’s another spirit,’ he announced. ‘Looks like a white bear.’

Bokomon flicked through his book. ‘Like this?’ he showed a diagram, and Kouichi nodded. ‘That’s the spirit of ice.’

They looked at Tomoki, because he’d been the one they’d decided, but when Tomoki (after stripping down to his underwear with Izumi resolutely turning away) dove down to get it, it wouldn’t budge. Nor would it budge when Takuya tried.

                ‘I don’t think there’s any point in me or Izumi trying,’ Junpei frowned, as Kouichi admitted he couldn’t make it budge either. ‘It might be the same reason Takuya and Tomoki couldn’t swap their spirits.’

Which was disappointing, because they knew full well the spirits they had fit them like hand me downs and not their own size snugly worn. But that was the idea, perhaps, to learn to fight seamlessly with these uncomfortably fitting spirits, and then they’d transcend the limit of perfection with the ones that suited them more.

For Takuya, that meant fighting with more than just his fists because there was no point being able to summon clouds that could flood a ravine without using them in a way that flooded his enemies and not a ravine, right? And for Junpei, that meant fighting with a hammer that made his hands shake when he held it up. And for Kouichi and Tomoki both, to fight with a spirit that burned, and for Izumi, to fight with a spirit that made her gracelessly stumble about.

                ‘Well, of course,’ Izumi laughed, once Takuya managed to put that into words – and they were out of the ravine by that point as well. ‘We tried to tell you that before.’

Well, he learnt better by example. Like the ice spirit that didn’t want to come with them.

And when they met a wizard guarding the bridge, he was ready. Or readier. The Wizarmon, as identified by Bokomon, replicated itself and he had his storm cloud ready to wash them off the bridge – though he quickly stopped when he realised the others would be washed off first. There had to be another way to control the water. He was the warrior of water, wasn’t he?

It turned out he had to argue with it. A lot. And beg it a little, before it rose up from the puddle he’d left it in and tripped the Wizarmon up. ‘Finally,’ Takuya sighed, as Junpei swung his hammer down.

The Wizarmon broke into bits of data. But so did the bridge, and Takuya wondered if anyone else wound up biting their lip with the way the ground trembled.

                ‘Crap,’ Junpei swore, changing back.

                ‘I hear you.’ Takuya plopped onto the puddle of his own making. ‘Controlling these newfound powers is going to take some heavy work.’

                ‘Well,’ Bokomon offered as consolation, ‘at least nobody’s hurt.’

                ‘Just bitten lips,’ Izumi muttered. ‘But those were honest adaptation issues. I doubt we’ll do any better.’

                ‘Please don’t jinx it,’ Tomoki whispered, wide-eyed. ‘I can only imagine all the different ways an out of control fire spirit can go wrong.’


	16. Breezy Village (Izumi)

They crossed into the Forest Kingdom without any further mishaps and Izumi skipped over the fallen branches. This was so much more comfortable than trekking through the dry and empty terrain, or climbing down and back up that ravine. Or sleeping on said terrain. She wished they’d had the chance to pack, at least. She’d have brought a tracksuit instead of a skirt (and thank goodness she’d been wearing sneakers and not loafers or sandles) and a sleeping bag. And her first aid kit… Or maybe not. First aid didn’t seem terribly difficult to come by in this world, and her first aid kid back at camp had given her a friend, only to snatch it back again.

                ‘What are you thinking about?’ Junpei asked curiously. ‘Unless you’re trying to tell the trees apart?’

Izumi laughed. ‘Maybe I should,’ she said. ‘What with the spirit of wood and all. But no. I was thinking what I would’ve packed if I knew we’d be camping in this weird world. Like a sleeping bag.’

                ‘Ah.’ He fell silent for a moment. ‘Yeah, I double the sleeping bag. And I’d have brought a stash of food too. Nothing like home food, you know. Even if we can eat the stuff here.’

                ‘Yeah…’ She sighed. ‘We can’t cook here, and I miss my father’s pasta.’

                ‘Not your mother’s cooking?’

                ‘My mother can’t cook.’

                ‘That’s unusual.’ Junpei blinked.

                ‘My mother loves cooking.’ Tomoki skipped up to them. ‘And her cooking is amazing.’

They both laughed at that. ‘Most people say that about their mother’s,’ Izumi said. ‘It’s just my mother burns toast and turns pasta into a lump of stuff you couldn’t get a fork through…’

                ‘Pasta being a recurring theme?’

                ‘Well, we are half-Italian,’ Izumi pointed out. ‘And pasta is delicious, you know.’

                ‘I know. Doesn’t mean ‘tou-san can do anything fancy with it.’

Izumi considered that. ‘Maybe my father can give him a few pointers?’

                ‘Don’t bother.’ Junpei waved a hand. ‘He’s the type of guy who’ll put a pot on the stove and forget about it. ‘kaa-san’s tired of scrubbing the burnt stuff off.’

Tomoki giggled at that. ‘Well, both my parents can cook,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they cook together.’

                ‘That sounds romantic.’

                ‘Onii-san says so too. He always escapes upstairs, but I like watching them.’

                ‘Watching your parents throw gooey eyes at each other?’ Takuya grimaced. ‘I’m with your brother on that one.’

                ‘I dunno,’ Kouichi said. ‘I rather like it.’

They stared at him. He shrugged. ‘It would be nice if one of those dates ever developed into something, though.’

Ah, that was right. Kouichi’s parents were divorced and his mother was a free agent, so to speak. ‘Of course, whoever it was would need a seal of approval from you,’ she commented. ‘Would you stand for it othwerise?’

                ‘It’s more the other way around,’ Kouichi admitted. ‘Not many people can tolerate a child from another marriage, and that’s one thing ‘kaa-san has no patience for.’ His tone was light, but his facial expression told he wasn’t too happy about that. ‘But some people are nice. One of them taught me a few games. Shogi, mah-jong… I never got the hang of Go, though.’

 _Was that an elaboration, or a misdirection?_ Izumi wondered.

                ‘What happened?’ Takuya asked curiously.

                ‘Didn’t work out. Not all nice people fall in love, I guess.’

Maybe they were being too nosy, but Kouichi didn’t seem as comfortable with this topic as he’d been with the topic of Minamoto Kouji. She supposed how characters in books related to their single parent becoming involved with someone else wasn’t always the case. ‘Do you want a stepfather?’ she asked. And maybe that was inserting foot in mouth, but maybe it wasn’t.

                ‘… I do,’ Kouichi admitted, after a pause. ‘It’s lonely. And sometimes it seems like there’s too much to manage a family with only us.’

                ‘Like whether your mother should be the disciplinarian or the softie?’ Takuya asked. ‘’kaa-san’s definitely the disciplinarian in my case.’

                ‘Onii-san is in mine,’ Tomoki decided, after a bit of thought. ‘He always says my parents spoil me, but I think he’s just jealous because I’m younger so they pay more attention to me.’

Takuya grimaced. ‘I think I have to agree with you there.’

Izumi laughed again. Wherever had they gotten to with this conversation? Poor Bokomon and Neemon looked completely mystified with all the talk about human family dynamics.

.

They came across a village: Breezy Village. Izumi sighed happily at the breeze they were known for. It was just a shame nobody built tree-houses… But she could see those being a problem for the Floramon who lived there. Their appendages were hardly appropriate for climbing.

                ‘But there’s a big tree in the centre of the Forest Kingdom,’ one of the Floramon explained, while serving soup to the travellers. ‘With stairs that lead all the way to the top. Seraphimon’s castle is up there, and hidden except for those who have permission to ender, but you can go up pretty high even if you don’t.’          

                ‘The view is wonderful,’ said another Floramon. ‘You can see the entire Kingdom from there.’

                ‘I’m sure it is,’ said Izumi wistfully. ‘Way better than that wasteland we were in before.’

The Floramon stared at each other. ‘There’s green land right up to the Flame Terminal,’ said the one who’d explained about the tree. ‘Except for the mountain ranges, but those are still ahead.’

                ‘Well, there was nothing green about that wasteland,’ Izumi huffed.

                ‘No, they’re right,’ said Bokomon, flicking through his book. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t notice that earlier.’

                ‘Why would you?’ Neemon asked innocently. ‘We’ve never left Flame Terminal.’

                ‘But I’ve – never mind.’ Bokomon sighed. ‘Still, the terrain we came though was anything but green. I can only conclude that’s a reflection of the strife our world’s found itself in.’

                ‘The digital world is in trouble?’ the Floramon asked, wild-eyed.

                ‘Indeed,’ said Bokomon gravely, ‘and these humans have arrived to save us.’

                ‘You say that like we have a choice in the matter,’ Junpei muttered.

                ‘In any case,’ Izumi said, a little loudly because really, Junpei needed to work on his tact. Though he wasn’t the only one. ‘Nothing big’s happened yet, as far as we know. We’re just training.’

Which was an apt way to put it, she snorted to herself. Not one of them could transform into their spirits at will and they’d tried multiple times along the way – even Kouichi who they’d learnt wasn’t the type to sit still when everyone else was trying to do something. It didn’t matter anyway. Without danger in their faces, they hadn’t succeeded in evolving. Even if danger hadn’t seemed to be a prerequisite the first time around. Maybe proximity had done it that time instead.

Maybe they’d never be able to evolve without danger. Maybe they’d never need to. But they all wanted to get some practice in, so they’d be more familiar with fighting this time round. They’d tripped up too many times in fights that could see them seriously hurt against higher level opponents. And they were lucky their opponents hadn’t been so high levelled to overwhelm them. If anything, they were the ones ridiculously high levelled.

But power wasn’t the best without control. Tomoki was the most concerned, and probably with good reason. Fire pouring out of his armour wasn’t a good match with a forest terrain. At least if Izumi couldn’t control her spirit, she’d only smack wood and trip over roots… Or she thought so anyway. There might be a stronger attack hidden in there. And Junpei might be able to do more than swing his hammer around as the warrior of earth. And maybe the rest of them had a weapon too. Kouichi certainly did. Or some sort of elemental attack like Takuya and Tomoki. Maybe they had multiple ways of fighting, or maybe they only had the one. But a battle where they fought for their safety wasn’t exactly the best place to be finding things like that out. It was only their last chance.

So they tried when they were walking, or taking a break, or camping out. But they hadn’t gotten anywhere. Still, until Bokomon pointed out things weren’t quite right, they hadn’t thought there’d been any immediate danger aside from being randomly attacked. But now…

                ‘What sucked the life out of the land?’

Nobody knew.

.

Their journey was beginning to open up, Ofanimon saw. They’d passed through the barren land whose fractal code had been so depleted and now they realised how very wrong it was. Hindsight was a cruel thing, but a trap they far too often fell into. Even the digimon they journeyed with hadn’t put it together this time. Maybe because there was no overarching villain singing their name.

Oh, there was an overarching villain. Of that there was no doubt, and it was to defeat that villain that she and the other two Angels struggled, and that she’d called the children to this world. But the world itself hadn’t noticed it yet. The enemy stirred in the shadows. Even their minions moved in the shadows and a confrontation was inevitable… And also not. More often they destroyed themselves, regardless of how the children went in combatting them.

The children grew strong enough to overpower them but even then, they never won.

It was like the fate of those minions was to be crushed by their master. And she pitied them. She really did. But it was so hard to just save six children; she couldn’t think of trying to save them as well.

_I’m sorry._

Digimon, at least, could be reborn.

In this battle of theirs, they were the sacrifices and the saving grace.

Humans could not, and so they had to be protected. And protecting them meant building them up to defeat the trials in their future, even if that meant adding trials to the present.

They had their spirits. Or the spirits most ill-suited to them.

Now, they had to master them.

_Good luck. And don’t think too much about the rest of us._

Because she knew they cared. But human morals weren’t necessary in sparing digimon. _We can’t die. But you can. And you mustn’t, otherwise our world will be corrupted such that no amount of data saved can bring us back._

.

Their stay with the Floramon went from calm to interesting to problematic. If they’d known staying to eat soup with them would invite the wrath of Mushroom, they wouldn’t have. Or maybe they would have. They were all young, after all, and ruled by their stomachs when hungry or when they smelt good food. And at least they could help out.

Hopefully.

Because talking didn’t work. At all. It never did and Izumi knew that too well because it had never worked with her, either.

Though maybe it was because someone always wound up screaming. Usually her – and yes, she knew she had to work on her patience, on her tolerance, but there was only so much she could compromise on, too. Should she just stay stuck under others’ heels? Because that’s what she saw happening…

But at least those sorts of things didn’t see a poor village being destroyed.

                ‘It’s ridiculous,’ Junpei muttered, ‘arguing about who the customers like better.’

                ‘People argue about ridiculous things,’ Kouichi said – and no-one was quite sure if he was agreeing with Junpei or excusing the digimon or just making an observation.

Takuya responded anyway. ‘Too true. I mean, look at all the things my brother and I argue about.’

                ‘Same,’ Tomoki agreed.

But arguing between brothers was so different, Izumi thought. And them getting side-tracked wasn’t helping with the problem. Especially since the three Mushmon brothers were a wrecking team and the poor Floramon were fleeing for cover.

                ‘I don’t know about you guys,’ Izumi said finally, ‘but I’m putting my foot down.’

And she did exactly that. One of Arbormon’s feet, technically. And successfully, which was a relief. Except trying to catch three Mushmons with two hands proved too difficult. Trying to catch one Mushmon brother proved too difficult when she could barely walk straight.

 _This would be so much easier with wings…_ she thought.

Still, the fact of the matter was that she didn’t have wings. She wasn’t floating though the sky and trying to ride the wind, either. She was stumbling around like she was on stilts and the others weren’t faring a whole lot better. Ranamon was a little shorter than Takuya was in his human state, and so Takuya kept on misjudging his moves. And to top it off, he only had big rain clouds to dish out and that was causing problems for the rest of them so they finally yelled at him to devolve.

                ‘Okay, okay,’ Takuya grumbled.

                ‘It’s not you.’ Junpei shook his hat – and accidentally the hammer, and quickly dedigiolved too when it plowed through a Floramon’s house. ‘Drat. We have to be more careful. Agnimon!’

Tomoki was fighting his own fire: trying to stamp the bits he dropped out and finding new fires catching on until Wolfmon helped him out.

                ‘Sorry,’ he gasped, turning back. ‘Sorry,’ he said again to the Floramon, who looked despairingly at their destroyed village.

                ‘Well, the Mushmoon have totalled it anyway,’ one sighed. ‘You’re just trying to protect us.’

Izumi made sure to stay far away from the fires – or ex-fires. She was made of wood right then and wood was definitely going to burn.

But now it was just Arbormon and Wolfmon against three Mushmoon. And she was slow and clumsy, and Kouichi was fast but couldn’t see properly.

She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. Tried to reach for a Mushmoon again and missed. _Darn it._ Wolfmon swung his blade and missed as well. The Mushmon skipped around them and –

                ‘They’re going in circles!’ Tomoki yelled.

Izumi blinked and pulled back a bit. Wolfmon swung where the Mushmoon had been standing just a moment ago. The Mushmon moved clockwise. _Ah, that’s what you meant._ She aimed where they’d move. Kouichi aimed where they’d been.

It was pretty satisfying watching one of the Mushmoon fly into a tree – and get fried by a laser?

                ‘Did you just shoot lasers out of your eyes?

Izumi looked at Wolfmon, who’d pulled his scarf back down to his neck (instead of covering his eyes like he had before). ‘I got frustrated,’ Kouichi said sheepishly, though he was blinking rapidly. Probably couldn’t see much in the aftermath.

                ‘If frustrated means you can shoot lasers out of your eyes, feel free,’ Izumi replied. Shame she didn’t have a power like that.

She tried glaring hard. _Nope, not working._

In any case, that took care of the first one, and the other two cowered back in fear.

                ‘Now how about we try and fix all this before there’s nothing left to fix?’

Unfortunately, they weren’t willing to listen to reason and who knew if that was before or because they’d fought them. The two cowering ones swallowed their fear and struck back, causing Izumi to step back and out of their way… and, thankfully, not fall on her backside again.

Kouichi didn’t manage to shoot any more lasers again either but, thanks to Tomoki, they had a better grip on the Mushmon’s movements and their own and could corner the other two as well – and so they stuck all three of them inside one of the hollowed out tree bases and give them a tongue-lashing.

Or that was Izumi’s original plan. Somehow, a seed bomb escaped from her mouth instead of words.

                ‘I was frustrated?’ she blinked, when Kouichi stared at her.

He muffled a laugh. Fair enough, since she’d gotten the line from him in the first place.

.

The Mushmon turned into eggs and then reformed. It was like watching the lifecycle of a digimon, Bokmon said in awe, except accelerated. ‘It takes months for digieggs to hatch, usually,’ he explained. ‘But the data is usually dispersed in the event of a digimon’s death, as well. This is different. Like they’re being purified instead of destroyed entirely.’

                ‘Purified…’ one of the Mushmon sighed. ‘Yes; things are so much clearer now. We let our jealousy get the better of us.’

And it was a lovely scene they watched, the Mushmon and Floramon apologising to each other, pointing out the best in each other and beginning to rebuild their little village together. But that hadn’t gone the way they wanted, at all. Izumi and Kouichi both found they had long ranged attacks but both of them could be trouble, and talking hadn’t helped matters at all.

But that’s a problem she hadn’t managed to solve, either. She had a better idea at least now, watching them post-purification… or rather, what Bokomon described as post-purification. And maybe that was why these challenges lay on their path. So they could learn to overcome the hurdles they’d faced in their own lives, if given the chance again.

                ‘Am I just seeing something sparkling over there or is something really sparkling?’ Kouichi asked, suddenly. He was sitting where he’d devolved and still blinking hard (and shading his eyes with a hand) and pointing to the three they’d slammed the Mushmon into.

Izumi looked. So did the rest of them. There was a spirit in the three – the spirit of wind, Bokomon said.

Like the spirit of ice a few days ago, none of them could make it budge.

Maybe they had progressed a bit. Izumi thought she had, with that little lesson from the Mushmon and Floramon, as well as her new attack and not tripping over her feet in the last breath of the battle… But that still wasn’t enough. That still wasn’t mastery. Or else the spirits of wind didn’t belong to her.

But she was sure they did. Something in her ached when they left. But they had to. They weren’t going to get stronger just sitting around.

They weren’t good enough quite yet. They’d have to come back once they were.


	17. Trailmon Graveyard (Kouji)

The next few days were silent. No messages on whatever his phone had turned into. No signs of life anywhere. Not even the trees rustled and it was a silence that made him want to scream or talk to himself or make some kind of noise just so he knew he wasn’t stuck in a never-ending nightmare.

But remembering how quickly those two fighting creatures had snuck upon him, he couldn’t afford to just scream his frustration and his fear.

So he hummed instead, as loud as he dared and he continued walking in one direction as well as he could manage. He had a landmark, at least. That swirling purple cluster of stars in the distance called the Venus Rose. He had no idea what lay there, but at least it would be different to this forest that seemed to crawl forever on.

It reminded him of one of his stepmother’s novels. One of those children ones that she used in her English classes. Something about an enchanted forest… or maybe it was just a tree in the forest. In any case, as far as he recalled it was a place where the children saw lots of magic and had lots of fun.

And he was seeing some weird stuff that probably qualified as magic, but certainly wasn’t having any fun. Talking monsters swinging real weapons around, fruit that didn’t taste like fruit at all and had his palms stinging as he tried to get a fire started on his own without a flint or match or anything…

If he’d known this was the sort of adventure he was signing up for, he wouldn’t have bothered. Sitting through an awkward anniversary dinner would be better than this.

And he didn’t even know how many days it had been since he’d last seen the lion and the feather-bird.

And it was at least three days before that since he’d gotten on that fateful train.

_I’m an idiot._

He stopped humming for a bit, letting the self-decrepitating smirk dance across his lips. He knew it had sounded suspicious and yet he’d followed anyway. What was he? The naïve little girl Alice in Alice in Wonderland? Well, in that case, a white rabbit should be showing up soon again.

He blinked. There was something through the tree line. Or maybe it was just a mirage. Sure, the most common of those was when someone was wandering a desert and had no water, but that wasn’t the only possibility. Any time one wanted something badly enough, they could see it and it’d just be a trick of the light or a mirror or one’s own mind…

He wondered if he hungered for a change of scenery that badly, to see it through the trees. But it was dead ahead in any case, so he didn’t lose anything by following it.

It was an effort to keep to the same speed, even with that possibility. He had to force himself to not dash for the break and feel his heart plummet to his shoes when it proved to not be the case. Instead, his heart hammered away insistently in his chest, as though fed up with his impatience, and he walked there as sedately and as silently as he could manage. He didn’t pick up his humming again.

Though when he got closer, the lack of trees in the distance became more prominent so maybe it wasn’t a mirage. Or perhaps mirages were that good at refining themselves to approaches. He wouldn’t know. He wasn’t exactly accustomed to them. They were just part of the general knowledge one picked up from reading and watching and hearing… For all he knew, those people had it all wrong.

He escaped the trees and there was dirt and pebbles under foot. It didn’t look like a desert, black and dreary, but it was plain. He could still see the stars in the distance and something rising up. A castle? A mountain?

He debated walking a little further, now that he was free from the forest, and he did walk a bit before rationality dropped back in.

Open plains like this meant no trees anywhere and who knew if there was smaller shrubbery he couldn’t see? Or anywhere to get water, for that matter.

So back to the forest for supplies it was. Which proved tricky in itself because he still hadn’t found anything plastic-like or a bottle or container to keep water in. The meat applies he could wrap in his jacket but it wasn’t a raincoat. It wouldn’t hold water. In the end, he packed his bandanna with as many leaves as he could manage and hoped that would keep it in. It didn’t quite, but it would take hours for that to all drip through. Hopefully it wouldn’t before he found something.

Because he wasn’t going to turn back to the forest a third time. Even the second had him constantly staring back at the tree line to make sure the plains beyond it were still there.

Now he walked across the plains, which were much harder to keep track of after the forest disappeared from view because the ground was so hard. His tracks vanished almost as soon as he made them. Still, he had himself. And until the water ran out, he had those drops not quite spaced out enough.

Though the plains weren’t as plain as he’d first thought. Everything was non-descript but there were things there. The occasional boulder or bit of fence, and he couldn’t work out if the place was a civilisation once in ruins or wildlife attempting to play the part of civilisation. Either way, it was as deserted as the forest and the bits of fence or boulder he found were hardly enough to pave a road. They didn’t do anything to orient him, either. They were like the trees in the forest: mochrome and monotone. The only difference is that none of the ones he passed bore fruit he could eat.

At least he managed to stumble onto a well. Another point to this having been a lost civilisation, he supposed. He filled up his makeshift water bag and hoped that would last until the next stop.

Honestly. What a life he was suddenly living.

It would be far too easy to just sit down on one of those boulders and not get up again. So hard to drag himself up and keep on waking. Especially when he had a destination in mind. Keep on heading towards the Venus Rose. And eventually he’d get there. Unless it was like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

No, he couldn’t think like that. He had to keep moving because there might be water nearby but no food. He’d starve out here. If he was going to lie down and not move somewhere, it should’ve been the forest he’d already left behind.

So he kept on walking.

.

Cherubimon watched.

The boy was stubborn. He’d give him that. And he was glad because things would go far worse if he wasn’t stubborn, if they weren’t all stubborn.

But that wasn’t anything new. Ofanimon had already assured them the children were stubborn.

Sometimes, that stubbornness proved to be their downfall.

This time, it would be the vehicle to their ascension. Hopefully.

But for now… That boy had to keep moving. And he would sit down and Cherubimon would watch with baited breath until he began moving again. _Thank goodness._ And then sit down again, then move again. It was a very long and tedious cycle and it was a wonder, really, that the boy was still going. But the boy had to keep on going. Because there was nothing out there and he knew it.

It wasn’t true, but he didn’t know that.

Despite what he was heading for, there was also Oryxmon, keeping an eye on him. Oryxmon whose bell would start to ring if there was danger. It hadn’t yet. Not that the boy had heard, anyway, but it had drawn two quarrelling digimon away from him, where they could destroy each other in piece.

And it was a shame they had to destroy each other at all, but both of them were warriors and that was their way, to fight to the death. Their pride would allow nothing else.

The boy would understand, probably. He’d seemed interested.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe that was a digimon thing humans couldn’t grasp.

Just as they digimon seemed to have a warped understanding of human strength… or frailty.

He wanted to go and fetch that boy. What would it serve to have him walk weeks here, unaided? But Ofanimon saw worlds where friendships and companionships and help that seemed well-meaning at first served to make them too soft, to unaware of their own capabilities and their own failings. And she only knew they _were_ capable because of hundreds of other futures she saw. And she put them all together and determined this. This plan the rest of them dedicated themselves to follow because it was the only hope for their world.

But there was still a line that had been drawn, and so he watched. So they all watched. And this was his charge.

Humans had to eat and drink and if this one ran out of one or the other, then Oryxmon was ready for more. If danger got too close without a spirit for him to fight with, then Oryxmon was there as well. Not the spirits though. The spirits waited. The only ones that wouldn’t leave the nest. That couldn’t leave the next.

Hundreds of futures, and Ofanimon had found only one way to purify them. But first, someone would have to take them.

And then that someone would be the bait, in a sense. But it would help him grow stronger, as well. To battle the loneliness that sought to unravel him instead of just bearing it. Because while he could walk, he bore it.

Soon, he wouldn’t be able to walk. Or bear it.

_I’m sorry. But you’ll grow stronger for this._

He knew this, because he’d grown stronger like that as well.

.

Kouji sat down again. His feet would never stop aching, it seemed. And he’d never find someone else in this godforsaken place. The fence creaked.

It would be just his luck, really, if it collapsed under him.

No wait. That wasn’t wood creaking. It was metal.

He shot to his feet and looked around. There was nothing nearby. A lump of something – a boulder probably – down in the distance where the plains dipped.

No, it seemed the creaking was coming from that direction.

He walked there. It wasn’t a boulder. It was a hunk of metal. A carriage? And further up, the head of a train.

It almost looked blue, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

                ‘Thank goodness.’

He jumped, then cursed his raw nerves. ‘What the hell?’

                ‘Oh, finally someone has come.’

And the train head burst into tears.

Kouji stared blankly at it… But he could understand the sentiment. Now that his heart had settled down, his legs were feeling rather wobbly.

He plopped down where he was standing. _Forget dignity._

                ‘Tell me, did you bring friends?’

                ‘Friends?’ Kouji snorted. ‘I don’t have friends. And I hate to disappoint you, but I’m wandering lost myself.’

                ‘Oh…’ The train really did sound disappointed, but it perked up after a moment. ‘Well, I’m happy for the company anyway. My name’s Angler.’ Then he blinked slowly. ‘My eyes are pretty bad nowadays, but aren’t you the kid I picked up?’

                ‘If you’re supposed to be blue and orange, then maybe,’ Kouji muttered. A moment later, he wondered how they’d both wound up I this state.

The train burst into tears again. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re alright. I thought the worst when I wound up here like this but you’ve got all your arms and legs and other bits on straight. It would’ve been a shame on a Trailmon, otherwise.’

                ‘Yeah, sure.’ _Trailmon. What’s a Trailmon_

The Trailmon didn’t seem to notice his confusion and he didn’t voice it aloud. Instead, Kouji figured he may as well rest there since that was as good a place as any, and the Trailmon was the only company to be had.

                ‘I’m guessing you can’t run anymore,’ Kouji asked, after a little bit.

                ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the Trailmon sadly. ‘I’ll just slowly rust away. But don’t worry. We digimon don’t die. Our data is simply debugged and restored and we’ll be back to normal in a jiffy. Honestly, it can’t happen fast enough. The worst is to be stuck waiting for it to happen. And rusting is such a _slow_ process.’

                ‘Hmm.’ Well, humans didn’t have that luxury for the most part. Unless they were locked away without any food or water. Unless they wandered for miles and miles without a destination in sight, until they started wondering why the hell they were still walking…

Humans did have that luxury, for the most part.

                ‘You should get going,’ said the Trailmon, after a little while longer. ‘This is a graveyard. Only the dying stay here too long. Though you’re welcome to sleep here if you like. I think the carriages are still pretty clean.’

                ‘No thanks.’ Kouji’s face twisted. Apparently Angler had no understanding of Japanese culture.

                ‘Then food,’ the Trailmon persisted. ‘We don’t eat that stuff. It’s for the passengers, and it’ll all rot with me anyway. You should take it. And some water containers.’

                ‘How much do you expect me to carry?’ Kouji asked, once he checked the stash out. It really was too much. Trays of burgers stacked up. At least six cartons of water and he’d be hard pressed to carry one of those, they were that big. But there was a smaller container too and he filled that to the brim, then considered again. What the Trailmon said was smart. Eat and drink his fill now, then spend the night and have breakfast in the morning, and then take as much as he could carry with him.

But sleeping in a graveyard…

                ‘By graveyard,’ he said, ‘what do you mean?’

                ‘A yard that becomes a grave,’ Angler replied. ‘Where we lie down and can’t get up again, really. Only happens in empty places like this. Otherwise someone comes along and speeds up the process. But it can be called a birth yard as well, because we’ll be reborn here, see?’

                ‘Not really.’ But not a graveyard in a human sense. Okay, he could deal with that. ‘I think I’ll spend the night after all.’

Though humans weren’t as fortunate to get a second chance once they gave up and waited for their deaths. They didn’t get reconfigured and reborn. This really was a strange world, where there wasn’t a one true finale. Did that make things more bearable, he wondered, or less, if everything could be restarted when they died?

Maybe that depended. Happy lives cut short and restarted. Closed rooms revealing a door.

Maybe humans had less opportunities but appreciated their lives more. Or maybe that was just a romanticisation.

                ‘Oh, good.’ The Trailmon sounded pleased with his decision.. ‘Let me tell some stories to pass the time.’

                ‘Can you start with what this place is?’ Kouji asked dryly. ‘I’m not in the mood for a fairy tale.’

He probably should have reconsidered that, because Angler’s story did sound like a fairy tale. Digimon? Angels? A demon sealed away under the crust?

But if that was the sort of nightmare world he’d wandered into, then he really should find out as much as he could from Angler.


	18. Gourmet Factory (Junpei)

They found a factory, eventually. The first building bigger than a hut they’d seen since entering the forest. The Forest Kingdom had begun somewhere within the forest but none of them really cared which. They were heading through the forest after all. Not too it. It simply painted the shortest path for them. Through green trees until the trees turned dark… Or so they assumed. Truthfully, not even their digital world guides knew anything about the Dark Continent.

It sounded ominous, that name. And the fact that the child chosen to take that spirit up was the only one who hadn’t yet passed was ominous as well. Though they tried not to worry too much. After all, Kouichi had taken a while with his as well and his spirit was the exact opposite. Maybe it was just the nature of those less tangible elements. Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

Or maybe it had something to do with them. Some of them were the type to rush into things head on but Kouichi was more cautious (except for when he’d wandered off at Flame Terminal). Maybe Kouji was like that too.

Or maybe it was because Kouji was on his own. Junpei had had Tomoki and Izumi. Kouichi had had Takuya. But if there were only the six of them, then there was no-one with Kouji. And there were four spirits who’d wind up without a human attached, in the end. ‘Why are there only six of us?’ Junpei wondered aloud?

                ‘Seven of us, you mean,’ Takuya corrected, though he was staring at the three Minomon lowering themselves from the gate. ‘Out of curiosity, who did you forget?’

                ‘That’s not what I – ‘ Junpei began, but the Minomon interrupted.

                ‘Seven guests, seven guests.’

Tomoki smiled up at them. ‘Would you happen to have anything to eat?’ he asked. ‘We’re getting a little tired of meat apples.’

                ‘And a place to wash up?’ Izumi added.

                ‘Of course,’ the Minomon sung. ‘Anything for our guests.’

                ‘What sort of factory this is?’ Junpei gave up his earlier train of thought. A factory was interesting, after all. ‘You make anything cool here?’

                ‘Want a tour too?’ Izumi teased.

                ‘Tour too,’ the Minomon chorused. ‘Tour and wash and food.’

                ‘How did food wind up at the end of the list?’ Takuya groaned.

                ‘It’s not like we have a shortage of meat apples,’ Kouichi shrugged, not seeming concerned at all.

And with that, their plans for the day were decided.

.

The factory turned out to be a disappointment at first glance. They made power packs that looked like something fresh out of the dark ages (and Junpei was sure he could put something better together just using odds and ends in his bedroom), and the food were batteries. It might work fine for the Kokuwamon who seemed built to run on electricity, but certainly not humans. Even Bokomon and Neemon looked put out and shoved their plates away… and presumably the Minomon couldn’t eat them either. They certainly didn’t try.

The bathroom turned out to be the highlight of their trip… And that was all Junpei’s fault.

He’d seen flashing lights. And for a moment he’d backed away thinking it was thunder but then his senses kicked in. There were no windows in the hallway. They needed lights to illuminate it. And he certainly couldn’t hear thunder half a second after. He could hear… whimpers, instead.

Which made sense if someone else had mistaken that flashing light for thunder. Was probably a light bulb about to go, Junpei supposed.

And then there was a sharp crack that wasn’t thunder or someone whimpering. In fact, he couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation at all.

So he crept over. And saw the Snimon with the whip, and the scared Kokuwamon.

And then he did bolt because those Snimon blades looked nasty and even if they didn’t, the whole lot of them were locked behind bars. No way he was going to get through that to stop the Snimon without hurting the Kokuwamon in the process.

.

‘A Snimon is holding the Kokuwamon hostage in the factory?’ Tomoki exclaimed. He at least looked suitably shocked. So did Takuya for that matter. But both Izumi and Kouichi were looking a little sceptical.

                ‘It can’t be that hard to prove,’ Kouichi pointed out. At least he hadn’t written the idea off entirely. Neither had Izumi – out loud, anyway. Which meant they were making progress. ‘There were a lot of Kokuwamon. They must have quarters or something. Or we can just ask one of them.’

                ‘They could lie,’ Tomoki said, voice wavering slightly. ‘If they’re being threatened…’

                ‘They’d have to be pretty good liars to manage that one convincingly,’ Izumi shrugged. ‘In any case, if those Minomon were supposed to be guarding the place, they did a terrible job.’

                ‘Not necessarily,’ said Junpei thoughtfully. ‘They were pretty all over the place. How do we know that wasn’t a ruse to buy time to cover everything up? And it was weird how they didn’t have any food fit for human consumption there. After all, even Bokomon and Neemon couldn’t eat batteries, so what are the chances the Minomon or that Snimon do?’

Izumi stifled a laugh. ‘Now we know why you’re so hung up on this,’ she teased.

                ‘No,’ he replied firmly. ‘I just don’t think how that Snimon was treating those Kokuwamon was right.’

                ‘If it were me,’ declared Takuya, ‘I would have smashed right through them.’

                ‘Water conducts electricity,’ Kouichi sighed.

The rest of them winced at the mental image that produced.

                ‘Ah, right,’ Takuya said sheepishly. ‘I’m hoping my real spirit, whatever it turns out to be, has more brute force. I’m still hoping for Agnimon. Though Grumblemon has some cool moves with that hammer. And Arbormon the way it swings its limbs around –‘

                ‘Considering it’s like walking on stilts,’ Izumi said airily,’ I doubt you’d manage so well with Arbormon. You need a certain amount of finesse.’

                ‘I noticed you left Wolfmon off the list.’ At least Kouichi sounded amused at the omission. ‘The lone wolf not your type?’

                ‘No way. I’m too much of a social butterfly.’

Junpei sighed. They’d gotten way off topic. ‘I didn’t try breaking the bars because chances were I would have hit the Kokuwamon as well,’ he explained. ‘You remember what happened last time.’

They’d almost fallen off the chasm when he’d shook the ground. They certainly did remember that. ‘Well…’ Kouichi said slowly. ‘Assuming those bars are as solid as they look, the only options were trying to smash the lock with your hammer or burning through the bars with Agnimon’s flames.’

                ‘I would’ve hit the Kokuwamon as well,’ Tomoki said, looking at his shoes.

                ‘Granted,’ Izumi pointed out. Well, at least they were offering ideas, even if they were sceptical. ‘That was during the day. If we wait till it’s night, they should be at home. Or maybe they rotate shifts or something. It might be easier to get into their compound, and then we can worry about the bars if we still need to.’

They went ahead with that plan. And it was a shame they didn’t have a flying type amongst them to give them a bird’s eye view, but they’d manage.

.

There was a compound. And the Kokuwamon did work in shifts. And it was terribly easy to sneak into the compound… And when they talked to the Kokuwamon inside, they learnt why.

                ‘Hostages?’ Izumi exploded. ‘That’s despicable.’

They all agreed with that. The question was what they were going to do about it.

They hashed out a plan together. And Junpei found himself wishing he’d never found the problem in the first place because it was dangerous, and there was really no way to make it less dangerous, too. And there were so many things that could go wrong. There could be more backup than the Kokuwamon were aware of. Snimon’s agility could prove to be a problem with only Wolfmon built for speed, and the flickering lights weren’t going to do Kouichi any favours.

And after all that talk about how him trying to break the Kokuwamon out with his hammer would be a bad idea, that was exactly what he’d been assigned to. And part of him wanted to just put his foot down and say he wouldn’t try, but Tomoki was in an equally precarious role in removing the restrictors from the Kokuwamon and he wasn’t complaining. He was a little white faced, but he wasn’t complaining.

Junpei closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Both of them were going to need far more control over their spirits than they’d shown thus far. But they could do it. Hopefully.

The Kokuwamon were depending on them.

.

Junpei roughly explained the way, but Kouichi could see better with most of the factory lights off in the night shift, and so he led the way, whispering as they went. ‘There are the cages.’

Junpei could see himself, once they were a little closer. The lights were still flashing. Kokuwamon charging the batteries. He couldn’t see Snimon though.

                ‘Is Snimon with them?’ Junpei whispered.

                ‘No,’ Kouichi whispered back. ‘Maybe he’s further ahead? Or not here at all?’

                ‘Go ahead then.’ This was his role, to break the Kokuwamon out of the cage and take them back to Tomoki.

Truthfully, he thought he could have found a way to break the locks without needed their digimon forms, but Tomoki had been the one to shut them down. ‘We need to control our spirits,’ he reminded. ‘We need to be in perfect sync with them – and if we can’t do that when digimon lives depend on it, then what will it take? Human lives depending on it?’

Though one could argue human lives depended on almost all their evolutions. No-one had told them yet what happened if they died. Only if digimon died and they’d just be reborn, good as new. Or better than new, even, if something nasty had gotten into their programmes. But humans didn’t work like that. Not in the human world anyway. Who knew what set of rules applied to humans in the Digital World.

And yet here they were, jumping into a battle that had nothing to do with their lives until they poked their noses into it.

Really, if they’d been in the human world, he’d never have just jumped into a quarrel… would he?

No, that was a lie, wasn’t it? Tomoki might be right when he said this was their chance to overcome those limitations. If they didn’t push themselves, if they didn’t take risks, they might never get there. Or they’d take too long. And did they really have the luxury of time? They still didn’t know what sort of enemy they’d been called to face but there was something there. Enough so that their mysterious informant stayed quiet and lead them along like beads on a string, even though she was one of the guardian angels of this world.

Powerful guardian angels that needed a bunch of kids with problems of their own to fight their battles for them. Which didn’t sound all that great on paper, did it?

In any case, Kouichi had vanished down the corridor and hadn’t returned, which meant he’d either gotten lost or run into Snimon. Which meant it was all the more important for Junpei to free the Kokuwamon, because those flashing lights they generated would be a distraction or worse for Wolfmon.

But still… Such a tiny lock and he was so clumsy with his hammer. And the Kokuwamon were looking at him with hopeful eyes. Depending on him.

He wasn’t a dependable person. That was the whole problem. No-one really bothered depending on him. He wasn’t too sure why because he didn’t remember doing anything that should damage somebody else’s trust in him. But still, that deeper connection just wasn’t there. He’d bring his umbrella every day and his classmates would sometimes forget theirs on a day that rained, but they’d never ask to share his; they’d pair up with each other instead. And when he gave them chocolate, they’d thank him and then wander off like that was a brief moment of kindness to fly off in the breeze. And they’d laugh at his magic tricks but never ask him to liven up their class café in the school festival, or try fixing the radio because he liked tinkering around with things. They just threw it out instead and would it have even hurt to let him try?

But he never really volunteered either, did he? Not until it was too late. When the radio was already in the rubbish bin, or his classmates had already walked out into the rain under umbrellas. Maybe that was the problem, and not that he wasn’t dependable after all. He didn’t volunteer and nobody asked. But in a world where there was only six – or five at the moment – of them – there really wasn’t a choice.

He took a deep breath and scanned his code, feeling the hammer take form in his arms. ‘Stand back.’ His voice came out low and gravelly – but firm. Confident. He wondered how long before he lost that?

In which case, he better hurry up. He eyed the lock, judging the distance and the angle and the force he’d need to smash it open and thanking his father for being a physics expert and teaching him all that before the school got around to it.

He swung the hammer and grit his teeth at the ringing sound of metal against metal.

Then the lock split and clattered to the floor, and the Kokuwamon cheered.

And the flashing lights continued. _Right, phase two._ ‘This way.’ He stayed evolved, just in case, as he led them down the hall, back the way they’d come.

Hopefully Kouichi would have the advantage now, if he was dealing with Snimon.

Hopefully green mantises couldn’t see in the dark.

Except when he turned back, it wasn’t dark. Something was glowing there.

And one of the Kokuwamon was tugging his leg. ‘What’s that?’ they quaked. ‘More of our friends?’

Was more likely Kouichi and Snimon, but it could have been. And that caused a panic. Some of them surged forward and Junpei hurriedly threw his arm out to stop them. And he didn’t smash a wall. He had a better sense of balance, now, it seemed. Even unconsciously. And his body was volunteering before his mind even caught up. ‘I’ll check it out. You guys go back to the compound. My friend’s getting the collars off.’

They protested, but they were all weak and dizzy and went without too much trouble. But they all gave him their thanks and best wishes when they did, and Junpei struggled under the perpetual weight of all of that.

Just for a moment. It felt like a rather warm security blanket, after that.

He smiled and set off towards the glow. Whether it was more Kokuwamon, or Kouichi and Snimon, Shibayama Junpei was on his way to help.


	19. Gaping Holes (Junpei)

There were no Kokuwamon in sight. Just a Snimon making gashes into the wall and Wolfmon dodging them all – though just barely. Junpei winced as another slash of the blade nicked his staff and Wolfmon stumbled into the reactor, before pushing off to dodge the next strike and aiming a haphazard laser had missed by a good foot.

And that glowing light was like a kaleidoscope. Junpei was distracted by it himself and he could only imagine how Kouichi, who hadn’t managed that well with the burner at Flame Terminal, was dealing with it.

Another crash near him and he jumped. Wolfmon dashed over to the other side of the reactor and Snimon followed. Snimon, at least, hadn’t seemed to have spotted him at all. Or maybe he thought an earth gnome would be a sitting duck.

It didn’t really matter. He’d decided to do something about that glow and he considered it. It was coming from underneath them. That much was obvious. Through the cracks in the floor where Snimon’s blades had nicked… and maybe some of those were from Wolfmon’s blades and laser beams as well.

Which meant he needed to break the floor. Enough so that he could get down there but not so much as to tip Kouichi and Snimon down as well. Or the alternative would be to cover it up, which meant breaking the roof.

_Hmm…_

He wouldn’t be able to reach the roof easily though. Wouldn’t that be far too risky? He didn’t know what was above them. At least he knew what was below.

_Right, then._

He caught Kouichi’s eye, gestured, and then swung the hammer, hoping the cracks didn’t spread too far and that Kouichi had gotten the message and that the whole thing didn’t just crumble on them because he’d gone ahead with the initiative for once – but nope. Rather, it seemed to have worked in their favour because Snimon hadn’t caught the signal and stumbled, so Wolfmon managed to score a clean hit with his saber.

And Grottemon jumped down neatly though the hole he created. It didn’t go very far down, but still Junpei felt pain shoot up both legs as he staggered on the landing. _Oww…_

And then he took in the sight before him. That… was most certainly another spirit. Like a beetle hunched up, and glowing fiercely like it was calling someone. Like how the spirit of earth had looked when he’d fallen towards it – and for all he knew, it had drawn him there in the first place. For all he knew, this spirit had drawn him too.

Except that didn’t make any sense. None of them could make the spirits of ice or wind budge, so why was this one calling?

He reached for it anyway. It felt so much warmer than the earth spirit he had. So much more comfortable. Like static because he’d been rolling on the ground with magic tricks or little electronic trinkets. Like chocolate melting in the pan or in his mouth.

For a moment, there was a wall. Like that voice in his head telling him not to eat another chocolate bar. Sometimes he’d ignore that voice and go ahead anyway, though.

This was one of those times. He hadn’t even brought enough chocolate bars to last a trip through another world.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was floating. His body felt lighter. It tingled, too. And he had wings. ‘I can fly!’ he cried. It was a pity no-one was there to see though. He flew a bit anyway, zigzagging in the hole the spirit had been in, before flying through his self-made crack. The earth spirit floated up as well. It must have gotten ejected from the device when he made contact with the other spirit. He wondered where it would go now. And what sort of attacks he had this time. And what the switch had been, that allowed him to get this spirit when the others couldn’t change theirs.

There’d been a test they had to pass. Had he passed it?

But Snimon and Wolfmon were still fighting, and he should help them out.

Or not. Wolfmon had pinned Snimon to the single, unbroken wall. And the mantis was slowly crumbling into data. ‘You didn’t save any for me,’ he pouted. ‘And I came with a cool new spirit too.’

Wolfmon turned towards him. ‘It was my responsibility anyway.’ And then blinked. ‘New spirit? And are you _flying?_ ’

                ‘Yeah, not sure how it happened… but that weird glow thing? Turned out to be a spirit and lemmie tell you: this one is way easier to move around in.’ He did a loop in the air to prove it. ‘See?’

                ‘I see.’ Wolfmon grinned slowly. ‘This one looks better on you, too.’

                ‘You don’t think a beetle is weird?’ he hedged… though Junpei didn’t think he minded the beetle-like appearance. He had nothing against them, even if it wouldn’t have been at the top of his list.

                ‘I think Takuya being a water nymph is the weirdest,’ Wolfmon shrugged. ‘But since he helped my burns and was off fighting a three-headed dog while I was unconscious, I can’t really complain.’

                ‘Well, you took out the big boss on your own,’ Junpei pointed out. ‘We’ve all got our strengths and weaknesses and things we’re capable of doing and things we can’t, and it’s just a balancing act managing all of that.’ He paused, thought about it a little more, then added: ‘Maybe that was the point. Of us having incompatible spirits first off. To overcome weaknesses we didn’t even think about or just tried to avoid.’

Wolfmon gave him a considering look. ‘Maybe…’ he agreed, before sinking against the wall and devolving. ‘Does me not passing out or throwing up mean improvement?’

                ‘Considering how distracting that glow was, I’m going to say yes,’ Junpei decided.

Kouichi laughed and his eyes fluttered. The amused expression melted into shock and he was scrambling. ‘Move!’

Junpei moved almost too late, but he managed. Kouichi had gotten a head start at least, and unlike Junpei, he could see what the danger was. Junpei just looked everywhere, wondering what caused the wind to rush past him so fast. ‘Junpei-san!’ Kouichi cried again – and then he shrieked as the hammer changed directions mid-air and came after him.

He dodged it though. Which was pretty impressive considering he was in human form. He was picking up those attacks fast. And Junpei finally spotted the problem. Grottemon, stepping out from behind the reactor.

_…wait. Grottemon!_

That made no sense at all, but Grottemon was going for Kouichi again and a head start was only going to allow him to dodge so many times in human form, so Junpei swooped in. _Time to see what the new me can do!_

He brought his fists down on the hammer’s handle. ‘Thor hammer!’

Electricity shot through the hammer and it fell with a clatter. Kouichi scrambled away from it, not wanting to get electrocuted by association. And Junpei couldn’t blame him. That didn’t sound pleasant at all.

Though that did mean the earth dwarf wasn’t immune to thunder attacks like would’ve been the case in something like pokemon. That worked to his favour.

But still…

                ‘Why are you attacking us?’ Junpei asked, flying out of the way of a clumsy punch.

                ‘You warrior of thunder,’ growled the dwarf. ‘Me defeat.’

Which didn’t answer the question at all, really, but at least it showcased his intentions loud and clear. ‘Can’t we talk about this?’ Junpei tried, dodging another strike. ‘You’re not the Snimon, are you?’ The Snimon had disappeared entirely by that point… But was that even possible, for the spirit to latch onto the first non-attached being it saw when they got their proper spirits? In which case, shouldn’t it be fighting tooth and nail to get to Kouichi, who was the one about ninety-nine percent responsible for its demise.

Considering there was no way Snimon knew that it was Junpei who’d kicked those events into motion, right?

Kouichi got back to his feet. ‘You stay out,’ Grottemon snapped.

                ‘Oh-kay.’ Kouichi blinked, but he kept a wary eye on the battle anyway. One hand was gripping that device. The other was clenched, as though trying to summon up digi-code and failing miserably. He was definitely sitting this one out after dealing with Snimon.

In comparison, breaking a measly lock didn’t take much energy. It just too care.

Which meant it was up to Junpei, unless the others were done with their bits and came to help. ‘Thor hammer!’ he tried again. It smashed into Grottemon’s fists and sparked.

Nope, no good. He needed something hardier. ‘Lightning Bomber!’ And he flew at Grottemon, ramming him into the wall. The wall tumbled down. And then the ceiling. _Oh crap._ ‘Kouichi!’

                ‘Here!’ Kouichi cried, and Junpei grabbed him around the waist and pulled him out. Behind them, the roof crumbled like falling dominos, and they could only hope the Kokuwamon had gotten out – and the others hadn’t come after them.

.

The others hadn’t come after them. Instead, they were watching in horror as the factory collapsed and the Minomon were set loose on the wind.

And then gaping as a digimon they’d never seen before flew out of the destruction, carrying Kouichi to safety.

                ‘That’s Blitzmon,’ Bokomon exclaimed, flicking through his book. ‘The legendary warrior of thunder. ‘But how did –‘

                ‘I got my spirit.’ Junpei set Kouichi on the ground and did a spin in the air. ‘And this one fits so much better.’ Then he groaned and sat down, devolving as he did. ‘But wow, flying uses up muscles I didn’t even know existed. And ramming hurts.’

                ‘We missed a whole adventure,’ Tomoki pouted. ‘What in the world happened?’

Junpei opened his mouth to tell the others all about it when something creaked behind them. ‘Don’t tell me he followed us,’ Kouichi groaned.

Grottemon had indeed followed them. And the others stared as he broke out of the collapsed factory and slowly stalked towards them. ‘Uh… what’s going on?’ Izumi tried. ‘Junpei, how are you in two places at once?’

                ‘That’s not me!’ Junpei waved his arms. ‘I have no idea what happened. I touch this guy and that one pops out and starts attacking us. At least Kouichi took care of Snimon before that happened, otherwise it would have been a madhouse.’

                ‘Considering we’d taken out three walls and half the floor before you got there, I think it was a madhouse anyway,’ Kouichi corrected.

                ‘How?’ Tomoki blinked.

                ‘Snimon’s blades were pretty sharp. So is Wolfmon’s saber. We wound up missing each other and hacking the walls to pieces.’

                ‘…well,’ said Bokomon, after the silence echoing that matter-of-fact statement from Kouichi, ‘I for one am glad you didn’t get poked to pieces instead.’

                ‘Yeah,’ Takuya agreed. ‘Shows we made the right choices after all. Everything worked out perfectly!’

                ‘Uhh…’ said Neemon, ‘the big mean dwarf’s coming closer.’

They checked themselves. And each other. Both Kouichi and Junpei were out after that grand escape. Takuya insisted he was fine but flopped as well. Apparently he’d over-extended himself on running diversion. Izumi thought she could do a bit, but not a lot. Which left Tomoki to do the bulk of the fighting and that didn’t sound like a great matchup, but as Junpei pointed out, if electricity worked against an earth attribute, there was no reason fire couldn’t work either.

Though it would’ve been nice if Takuya could evolve. Ranamon’s rain clouds should have been a big help, especially if Blitzmon’s electricity could be combined with it.

_Electricity…_

A lightbulb went off in Junpei’s mind. ‘The Kokuwamon!’ He stood up. His muscles ached but he managed it. In fact, he was surprised they didn’t ache more. But maybe it was because he wasn’t flying. And that was mostly his fault anyway. He’d been having too much fun flying in loops. He’d never been able to move in three dimensions like that after all.

He was sure that, if the others sprouted wings, they’d do the same thing. An entire other dimension opened up, after all.

The others stared after him as he ran into the compound, explaining his idea to the other Kokuwamon. They didn’t have much water, sadly, but they did have cables. Lots of cables. And half of the humans couldn’t evolve but they could certainly carry cables. And Izumi had detachable limbs that could safely throw them.

 And the Kokuwamon could stay well out of the way and still help out. Or the ones who weren’t on night duty, anyway. Junpei left it to the chief to sort that out. He busied himself carrying a cable over his shoulder instead.

                ‘This was a smart idea,’ Izumi said admiringly, as he handed the cable to her. ‘Though it does seem weird Agnimon’s struggling on a one to one match, especially after you and Kouichi already fought him.’

                ‘I didn’t fight him,’ Kouichi corrected.

                ‘No,’ Junpei agreed. ‘You just pointed out I was about to have my head hammered off.’

                ‘Oh, gross.’ But Izumi looked appreciative. ‘You’ve got a sharp eye in the dark, don’t you. Did you eat too many carrots when you were little or something?’

                ‘Carrots help night vision?’ Kouichi asked.

                ‘Or that’s what my parents told me when I didn’t want to eat them. They might’ve just been making it up – go Tomoki!’

Tomoki, with the help of the Kokuwamon’s electricity, managed to knock Grottemon back.

                ‘All right!’ Takuya cheered. The rest of them echoed the sentiment.

But they’d celebrated too soon. Grottemon was aglow when he scrambled back to his feet. The same sort of glow that Junpei had seen not that long ago. Even though it was impossible, right? There couldn’t be another spirit in the factory?

But there was, and not even one for them. Grottemon was engulfed in it instead.

                ‘What’s going on?’ Neemon asked, bewildered.

None of them could answer that. They could only watch, agape, as he transformed into something bigger. Sturdier. And looking a lot more powerful.

‘Me Gigasmon,’ he roared, raising his fists and hammering the ground. They fell like scattered dominos: the humans, Neemon and Bokomon, and all the Kokuwamon too. ‘You no match for Gigasmon now.’

They scattered as the digimon leapt into the air and then landed where Agnimon had been standing. The tremor made the ground shake again anyway. The Kokuwamon huts fell one after another and they stared, horrified.

Agnimon’s limbs became engulfed in fire as he lashed out. But the fire just bounced off the thick skin. The cables spluttered, ineffective. Arbormon tried to punch but they bounced off as well. Junpei, Kouichi and Takuya all reached into their pockets and tried to evolve again.

They didn’t quite get there before the ground was lifted up from beneath them. One of Izumi’s arms manages to grab Junpei, though the other misses by the sound of her cursing. The others scream, until he’s not sure who’s where except for Arbormon holding onto his arm hard enough to hurt.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll take that if they don’t get separated.

Because the only other thing he can see is Gigasmon, quite literally, swallowing the ground up.

Then they were all falling and could only hope they managed to land in the same place and safe… and the Kokuwamon managed to get away. Because it would totally suck if they’d gone through all that trouble to free them from the factory and that Snimon, only for them to wind up out of the frying pan and into the fire.


	20. Toys for the Kids

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for vanishing with this story (and most of my multichaps, really). A lot of things happened May/June: a few deaths in the family, and then psychiatry which isn't much on paper but a pretty heavy mental load on the students... By the time I recovered from all of that and my own health scares, I was swamped in exam prep and competitions and big bangs whose deadlines were too close for me to have time to work on any of my other multichaps. But now my finals are done and the next attachment has me on the coast (lovely scenery, but no internet lol) which should be a good time to play catch-up. I still want to finish this year, but that'll mean I have to write more than two chapters a week so we'll see how that goes. I'm also not entirely done with exams (I know, I've done finals but still more exams to go this year!!! :() But I'll try, because this has come so far I don't want to abandon the challenges I'm writing this for when it still has a chance, and I'd like to finish a multichap that's over 100k for once (because there's so many of those still in the works). And this wasn't the best chapter to come back on (pretty quiet, really), but it's Tomoki introspection and we don't see a lot of that so I'm going to splurge a little. Enjoy! And please keep cheering me on!

 

It was a beautiful dream, but still strange.

He’d expected all the others to be sharing his dream, or else none of them. Instead, there was only Takuya. The rest was fine, though. Gorgeous balloons floating just out of reach. Toys more than he’d ever dreamed… Except he was dreaming about them now, wasn’t he?

It was idyllic, but something about it unnerved him.

Still, as Takuya curled up under the tree and slept, Tomoki crept out to the toys. There was no harm in indulging a little, right?

Though his cheeks did burn a little in embarrassment when Takuya woke up and stared incredulously at him.

Luckily, Takuya was a kid at heart as well, and joined in without much fanfare. They all were, really, but some moreso than others. Tomoki couldn’t imagine Izumi letting loose like this, or Kouichi. Junpei, maybe. Or maybe not.

They’d been together for how long now? They still didn’t know each other particularly well. He knew Takuya and Izumi and Kouichi were all in fifth grade, and Junpei was in sixth. He knew Takuya had a younger brother in fourth grade, and Kouichi had a younger twin he knew next to nothing about. He knew Izumi was older than Takuya by three months, but not whether Kouichi was older or younger or somewhere in between.

                ‘Do you know when Kouichi’s birthday is?’ Tomoki asked, the pair of them sitting on the back of a toy train and counting the helicopters that flew past. Takuya had been with Kouichi for longer, just like he’d been with Izumi and Junpei for longer.

But he still didn’t know Junpei’s birthday, or even how old he was. Just his year in school.

                ‘April, I think he said,’ Takuya frowned. ‘He’s older than both Izumi and me; that’s hardly fair! He’s also better at school. I’d probably go as far as to say he’s bored.’

                ‘Really?’ Tomoki asked. ‘How did that topic come up?’

Takuya laughed. ‘Actually, I was telling him all the detentions I’d gotten, and he was telling me the stuff he did in class that he got away with.’ Then he pouted again. ‘Honestly, he only gets detentions for being late sometimes. Never for not paying attention in class, like doing homework for other classes or reading a library book under the table or writing or drawing something that’s plainly not schoolwork… I want to go to his school.’

                ‘Doing all that is nowhere near as disruptive as kicking a soccer ball around inside,’ Tomoki pointed out. ‘I doubt any school would let you get away with that – oh, the helicopter’s gone.’

It was gone, but the train was still carrying them somewhere.

‘Should we get off?’

‘Nah.’ Takuya settled back. ‘We need to find the others, and the less walking to do it, the better, right?’

‘True.’ And Tomoki felt a stab of guilt – though he’d thought this place was a dream at first. Who could blame him. ‘Any clue where we are?’

‘Nope. Then again, can’t say I know much of the Digital World.’

‘I wish Bokomon was with us. He’d know.’

They sighed, suddenly feeling glum.

‘You think they’re okay?’

‘Probably. We all went flying somewhere so it’s just a matter of meeting up again.’

Assuming nobody was a pancake or had run into trouble… but maybe the fact that they’d woken up at full health negated the possibility of pancakes. Real world laws didn’t seem to work here like they did in their world. Like the turning into digimon and gaining superpowers. Like getting tossed into the sky and landing without a single injury.

But then sometimes it did. Like when they’d been thrown into the sky. Or maybe that was an impossibility in the real world too. The reason people needed parachutes if they fell out of an aeroplane. That was a little beyond him, though. That was the stuff high school students learnt about. Or junior high school students. Maybe Junpei knew a bit.

                ‘If Kouichi was born in April, then he was pretty close to being a year ahead,’ Tomoki said thoughtfully. ‘It would suck to be born on April 1.’

                ‘I dunno,’ Takuya said. ‘That’s an extra year home from school.’

                ‘And an extra year you have to hang around when everyone else graduates.’

                ‘True, true.’ He hummed. ‘I wonder if I’ll continue through to high school. I’d much rather play sports than study, but I have to make a name for myself in junior high to pull that off.’

                ‘You’ve got four years to think about it,’ Tomoki shrugged. ‘I’ve got six.’

                ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t dream.’ Takuya stared up at the sky. ‘Shinya’s already decided he’s going to be a forklift driver. Though a week before, it was a firefighter. There seems to be a running theme of trucks, for whatever reason. He even asked for a forklift for his birthday.’

Tomoki laughed. ‘I don’t think even my parents would have gone for that.’ And then he realised how he’d said it. The same way Yutaka was always saying it, except his tone was more accusatory. Tomoki always put that down to jealousy, because his parents hadn’t been that well off when they’d had Yutaka. They hadn’t even been married. So life had been tough for a few years, and by the time they were solid Yutaka was in junior high and baby Tomoki was on the way.

But Yutaka never agreed with that. He said it wasn’t jealousy, but rather Tomoki being spoilt. He said no-one would want to be friends with him and that had turned into a fulfilling prophecy. Until this world, anyway. ‘Hey, Takuya,’ he said. ‘You’re my friend, right?’

                ‘’Course,’ said Takuya easily. ‘We all are.’

                ‘But we’re kind of stuck together, aren’t we?’ Now that the thoughts were there, they were spiralling. Damn Yutaka for saying things like that. Damn him for believing it. ‘I mean, you can’t really leave someone or other behind –‘

                ‘Sure we can,’ Takuya shrugged. ‘I mean, we were all at Flame Terminal at the same time but we could have split up at any point after that. We mightn’t have as much firepower as all of us together, but if two of us were so volatile we just couldn’t go along, then it would be safer overall. Friends can be trusted, but you can’t always trust people you don’t get along with to watch your back through anything, right?’

Tomoki digested that. ‘Isn’t that idealistic?’ he asked. ‘I mean, friends aren’t always trustworthy.’

                ‘Then they weren’t friends to begin with. You just realise that after the fact.’

Yeah, that made more sense. But Takuya said it so flippantly Tomoki had to wonder if he’d ever been betrayed by friends like that, or if he was simply regurgitating from fiction. Though he supposed it didn’t matter. ‘You’d have been pretty popular, huh.’

                ‘Nah, not really.’ Takuya stretched. ‘I’m pretty bossy and loud-spoken, you know. It takes certain types of people to put up with that.’

                ‘Huh,’ said Tomoki. ‘And I’m a wimpy and needy brat, but I guess there are people who can put up with that as well.’

                ‘Sure thing.’ Takuya patted him on the shoulder. ‘And starting a conversation with Kouichi can be like pulling teeth, and sometimes Izumi says what’s on her mind and Junpei can be too down to earth and not adventurous enough for his own good, but we’ve done pretty well so far.’ He paused, then added: ‘I wonder what sort of person Kouji will turn out to be. Kouichi only said he looked distant and unapproachable.’

                ‘But that may just be Kouichi,’ Tomoki pointed out. ‘He’s not the sort of person to approach people to begin with, and this one comes with extra baggage. It mightn’t have mattered what sort of person Kouji was, really, with all of that between them.’

                ‘Hmm, guess so.’ Takuya hummed. ‘You’re a smart kid, you know. Not necessarily book smart, but people smart.’

Tomoki snorts. ‘I’m not people-smart. I’m a bully magnet.’

                ‘Show that spunk to them and I doubt you’ll have problems,’ Takuya replied. ‘They’re kids too, right? They’re not much older than you.’

                ‘Yeah…’ Tomoki would have been mad earlier, because Yutaka often said the same thing and it never worked, but now… ‘We’ve seen scarier stuff.’

                ‘We have.’

That didn’t stop either of them from screaming a few minutes later when the train rammed into a giant black teddy-bear.

.

What happened after that was a little blurry, from Tomoki’s point of view. He thought he heard someone crying, before his own head filled with cotton that took its sweet time emptying out. By the time it did, though, he was on the lap of something soft, with something pink in his face.

Fairy-floss. He finished half the stick before regaining enough sense to look around. And he only managed not to scream again because he still had fairy-floss in his mouth.

But the black teddy-bear had chains and claws and patches and looked _very_ scary, in his defence.

Though when he offered another fairy-floss stick, he also looked sad.

 _Maybe he’s just lonely,_ Tomoki thought. That reminded him of that kid in his class, who everybody picked on because he had a scar on his face from surgery. That wasn’t his fault. He’d gotten some sort of cancer and they’d had to cut it out, and plastic surgery was expensive and imperfect and he would grow out of his new skin-patch anyway. But that didn’t stop other kids from picking on him. That didn’t stop the grimace whenever anyone laid eyes on that bit of his face, or the way he’d taken to always wearing a scarf so no-body would have to look at it and, at least, people who didn’t know could look at him like there wasn’t anything odd.

But in school, pretty much everybody knew. So in school he was picked on, and he was lonely.

Maybe this bear was the same way, looking scary but being alone and ostracised deep down.

So he offered a smile. It was small and tentative and shaky, but it was a smile.

The bear smiled back, and pushed the fairy floss into Tomoki’s hands.

Maybe two fairy-flosses in a day wasn’t a great idea. ‘Takuya, you want some?’ he offered.

Silence. Takuya wasn’t there. Tomoki shot off the bench and the bear’s face changed and he swung at the bench, cracking it into two. _Uh-oh._ ‘I’m so sorry,’ Tomoki said sheepishly and rather scared (and hopefully he was doing a good job at hiding that fear). ‘I just lost a friend of mine.’

The bear seemed placated at that, offered a game console. He didn’t seem interested in Takuya being missing.

                ‘You… want me to play with you?’ Tomoki checked.

The bear nodded.

                ‘Well… okay, then.’ He was good at games, at least. And if all the bear wanted was company…

Especially since the bear was pretty volatile, but also pretty lonely. _Maybe he’ll warm up to the idea of Takuya and the others later…_

_And hopefully Takuya was alright._

.

Takuya was alright. He’d found a bunch of ToyAgumon and stormed the tower Tomoki had found himself in, but by that point Tomoki had beaten the WaruMonzaemon in every game he owned and turned him (apparently back) into a much cuter and cuddlier yellow bear called Monzaemon.

And Monzaemon had grovelled and apologised and then played another round of games as well. And even offered to help find the others. But Takuya had shown up before they left.

Still, the help was welcome for finding the others.

The ToyAgumon, who’d become fast friends with Takuya by then, offered to help as well. And they and the toys quickly scoured the floating island (which was a shock as well: they were on a floating island?!) and found no signs of other humans… or Bokomon or Neemon or Grumblemon, for that matter.

The last was a relief. The rest… not so much.

                ‘They’ll be down in the mainland then,’ said Pandamon (who was another friend Takuya had picked up along the way). ‘We can fly you down, but it would help if we knew where to. Otherwise you’ll be crossing the world on those skinny legs of yours.’

They spent the next little while pouring over the map and sending the helicopters and ToyAgumon out.

                ‘We were at a factory before we got blasted,’ said Tomoki thoughtfully. Unfortunately, there were a lot of factories in the Digital World. ‘There were lots of Kokuwamon there, and a Snimon running the show.’

                ‘And those weird leafy things guarding the door,’ Takuya reminded. ‘Minomon, I think?’

                ‘Yeah, that sounds about right.’ It was a bit of a struggle, remembering all the names of all the different digimon species they were seeing. It was like trying to memorise the names of new classmates. Some stood out. Others didn’t. And then of course were new people from other classes and other grades they’d eventually meet.

                ‘Hmm,’ hummed Pandamon, who seemed to know the most about the digital world. Monzaemon was in charge of the toys, and the ToyAgumon were pros at recon. Like a little army. ‘And you set out from the Flame Terminal, you say, heading in the direction of the Forest Terminal.’

It didn’t take long for a ToyAgumon to return and report a destroyed factory. ‘The Kokuwamon are digging in the mountain,’ it reported, ‘with the help of the neighbouring KaratsukiNumemon. They’re making a new home there.’

                ‘Good for them,’ said Takuya. ‘But a mountain’s a big change from a factory, isn’t it.’

                ‘Mountains are good for attracting electricity,’ said Pandamon. ‘Or anything tall or high up, really. This floating island of ours is no different, but the static it collects is enough to power us for the most part. Still, we dock on top of mountains occasionally.’

                ‘I think Junpei would have a blast hearing about this,’ Tomoki thought aloud… which turned out to be a mistake because Pandamon descended into a spiel that went over both their heads, apparently with the intention of them passing along the tale.

They probably wouldn’t remember it long enough to pass it on, all things considered. Tomoki was sure that, if he was in class and the teacher called him out, he’d embarrass himself. And Takuya would probably laugh it off with some joke and then wind up in detention.

Meanwhile, the ToyAgumon traced their route and their old journey, and then fanned out, searching for the others. Eventually, after they’d breaked for dinner (consisting of sweet pastries and cake, with syrup on ice-cream for dessert), one of the ToyAgumon came in, shouting excitedly. ‘I found two humans,’ it shrieked. ‘They’re at Togemon’s school! With a Bokomon and Neemon too.’

But that left one human though, and if Bokomon and Neemon were with the other two, then that meant that one of the three humans was all alone.

                ‘We’ll keep looking,’ Pandamon promised. ‘This ToyAgumon will stay after dropping you off –‘

They’re interrupted, by the arrival of another ToyAgumon. ‘I found two humans –‘

                ‘Yes, we already know,’ Pandamon sighed.

Apparently, their territories overlapped.

Except the ToyAgumon was waving its hands. ‘No, there’s that weird creepy digimon closing in on them!’

By weird creepy digimon, they meant Gigasmon, presumably. Takuya and Tomoki looked at each other. ‘Figures he wouldn’t just come after me. Scared of water, huh.’

Which made sense, really, since water probably stood the best chance. Or ice, which they couldn’t use. But wood and electricity? They’d already seen how well that had matched up, and it hadn’t, really. They’d be stuck depending on brute force and it was the earth spirit that was built for close combat moreso than the rest of them.

As for Wolfmon… swords against brute strength didn’t sound all that great either, though both Kouichi and Junpei could probably outrun him if need be.

But they were near a school, whichever or both of them it was.

                ‘We’re going,’ said Takuya.

Rushing headlong into trouble… He could stay and look for whoever was missing. They might be in trouble too. Worse trouble. But Gigasmon (or maybe he’d turned back into Grumblemon) was the worst of it at the moment, right? And Agunimon was better at close combat fighting than anyone else on their team. That wasn’t necessarily _his_ strength, but it was what he could offer for the time being.

And Takuya had said “we” without a second thought.

                ‘Yeah, we’re going.’

                ‘We’ll continue looking for your friend,’ Pandamon repeated. ‘We’ll send a ToyAgumon if we hear anything. And if you guys find him first, send this one back.’

And then they were shaking hands (and receiving hugs from Monzaemon that warm them up inside) and snuggling into a large model aeroplane that was still too cramped for Takuya. But he grit his teeth, curled up tightly, and bore it. And Tomoki found himself picking up that conversation from earlier, telling about how his classmates had tried to get him into trouble one time by hiding his things, but had been caught-red handed and given a week of detentions in the process. He left out the part where he’d lost a few things anyway, but his parents had replaced them. Because there was only so many places to hide things in an elementary school. He could have tried harder. He could have fought for them, and it didn’t have to be with fists.

But things were different, now. Maybe he _could_ fight now. He had a friend beside him, one who promised he was there out of more than just obligation and he’d brought up a good argument as well. And there were two more friends that needed help (or would, soon, probably) and another they still had to find. Maybe he could stay behind, but it was the ToyAgumon and Pandamon really doing the searching. He’d just sit there and eat sweets. At least this way he’d do something useful. Maybe not like Ranamon against the warrior of earth, especially with lightning thrown into the mix. But he could still fight. There were weaknesses. The metal hammer. The eyes that were more fragile than the rest of him. And the foliage, if there was any. Or maybe that’d be all damp from the rain clouds Takuya could summon up on command. They’d see, when they got there.

After all, it might be possible that Gigasmon would pass the other two completely, or be beaten before they got there.

And, hopefully, whoever was on their own was fine as well, and had found someone or something to lead him or her back to the others.

It was too bad only the Venus Rose could be seen from the sky any time of day. He wondered why that was.


	21. Back to School (Izumi)

Izumi woke up on top of Junpei, which was somewhat of a relief because at least that was Junpei accounted for. He was still out, though, so she took the moment to stretch, check herself, and then look around.

She was fine. She wasn’t even stiff from being in such an odd position – or being tossed from a factory and landing who knew how far away. Bokomon might be able to tell them. He had a map, anyway. Or the book, which was as good as a map as they had in this crazy world.

But she didn’t see Bokomon or Neemon anywhere. Or Takuya or Tomoki or Kouichi for that matter. It was just her and Junpei.

She sighed. Not that Junpei wasn’t decent (and certainly not that she preferred to be alone), but how were they going to find the others?

She wandered a little further. The pair of them had landed in a field of some sort, and she was barely taller than the crops. It was troublesome, really, because they could have landed nearby and she just couldn’t see them. ‘Bokomon!’ she shouted. ‘Neemon! Takuya! Tomoki! Kouichi!’

                ‘Hey, you forgot me?’ said Junpei in an injured tone, sitting up.

Izumi laughed at that, though she was relieved he was up. ‘I already knew you were there,’ she explained. ‘It’s everyone else I have no clue about.’

                ‘Huh.’ Junpei stood up and dusted himself. ‘Where are we?’ Then he checked his statement. ‘Guess you wouldn’t know any more than I do. Did we land in a wheat field?’

Izumi shrugged. ‘Not the best place to be looking for people without an aerial view,’ she commented. ‘Maybe Arbormon’s detachable legs –‘

                ‘Or I could fly,’ Junpei offered.

Izumi deflated. ‘Yeah, that’s more reasonable.’

Though when Junpei, or Blitzmon, took to the sky, he only found a walking cactus of note.

.

                ‘The walking cactus must be a digimon,’ Junpei mused, as they (back in their human forms) walked in the direction of said cactus.

                ‘It’s kind of sad the guy in a costume theory is suddenly a lot less likely,’ Izumi sighed. ‘We’re getting too used to this.’

                ‘I wouldn’t call it sad,’ Junpei corrected. ‘More… frightening.’

                ‘Frightening?’ Izumi echoed, surprised.

                ‘Well, yeah.’ Junpei walked a little ahead, ‘We’re turning into digimon and fighting and that’s going to change us. There’s no getting around that. Not to mention, the entire set-up is forcing us to change and change fast. Like the lady who sent us the messages is prepping us for something. I mean, I signed up for a game, not playing hero.’

                ‘I think you’re doing fine so far,’ Izumi replied, before her words caught up with her. ‘Whoops. At least it wasn’t an insult this time.’

Junpei made a confused sound in reply.

                ‘I mean I tend to say what’s on my mind, without activating the brain to mouth filter first,’ Izumi explained sheepishly. And often, she didn’t apologise either because whoever she was talking to would take whatever she’d say and run with it and then apologising meant more than just admitting she hadn’t thought her words through before speaking. It would, often, mean admitting she was wrong when she didn’t think she was. Sometimes the conversation ended there, with an air of awkwardness. Other times, it descended into an argument. ‘A lot of people don’t like that.’

                ‘It’s not like saying whatever other people want you to say works to keep friends, either,’ Junpei shrugged. ‘Already tried that.’

                ‘Oh?’ Junpei hadn’t seemed the sort, to her. Or maybe because there were people like her and Takuya in the group that it went unnoticed. ‘Yeah, well, it always felt like I’d wind up compromising myself if I did that, so I didn’t. Still, sometimes I’d kind of wish I wasn’t so stubborn, you know?’

                ‘We’re a right pair,’ Junpei laughed. ‘You know, when I first saw you on the train, I figured you’d be one of those gorgeous stuck-up girls that had all the boys in class following her around like lost puppies, or something.’ He’d slowed down by then, enough so that Izumi could see the slight blush on his cheeks and infer that he had, at one point anyway, been one of those “like a puppy” boys. ‘The kind that’d pick the most pathetic out of them all and make them a laughing stock.’

                ‘ _Stronzi_ ,’ Izumi spat, before going a little red herself. She’d have earned a very severe glare from her parents for that.

Junpei blinked. ‘Uh, I don’t –‘

Oh, right. She’d slipped into Italian. ‘It’s an Italian swear word,’ she explained sheepishly. ‘In this context, I meant… well, bitches.’

                ‘Ah.’ And then he, surprisingly, grinned. ‘I’ll take that. That means you’re on my side.’

No comment on how it was unladylike to swear. That meant Junpei was on her side too.

She couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Why aren’t you in my school?’ She knew the answer, sadly. Her school was all-girls, so of course there wouldn’t be a boy there.

                ‘Same reason you aren’t in mine?’ Junpei offered with a shrug. ‘Honestly though, I doubt I would’ve said all this back in the real world. Not as things were, anyway. But I’d like to think I’ve gotten a bit stronger, and that I know myself a little better.’

                ‘You got the spirit that truly belongs to you,’ Izumi pointed out, ‘provided we’re on the mark with how all these spirit things work. That’s a step ahead of the rest of us.’

                ‘That’s right.’ A slow grin spread across his face. ‘There’s hope for me after all.’ Then he dug into his pockets and offered her a chocolate bar.

Izumi took it happily. ‘Chocolate! Bellissimo!’ Then she blinked. ‘What are you doing with chocolate in your pocket, anyway?’

The grin vanished behind a blush. ‘Well… Chocolate always made me feel better.’

                ‘Chocolate does that,’ Izumi agreed, unwrapping hers. ‘It’s really good for menstrual pain and – Whoops, forgot who I was talking to there.’ Her dad still went red whenever she or her mother brought their monthly cycle up.

Junpei made an odd noise, half-way between a snort and an embarrassed choke. ‘Everyone else just says I’m a rich pig. Behind my back, usually.’

                ‘Better when they say it to your face,’ Izumi muses. ‘At least that way you’re not caught unaware later.’ Because it hurt when rejection slipped in like an afterthought, after she’d thought she’d made some leeway with her classmates after all.

It was a different sort of pain when something nipped the chocolate right from her fingers. ‘Hey!’ she exclaimed.

A blur of silver disappeared into the wheat, followed by shouts of ‘Kapurimon!’ and something green heading their way.

                ‘Think that’s the giant cactus?’ Junpei asked.

                ‘Probably,’ Izumi replied, though she was looking at her fingers. They were a little red and a little chocolate stained – and she hadn’t even gotten to eat the chocolate. After a friend had shared with her. ‘You know, people don’t share with me.’

                ‘Don’t share with me either,’ Junpei pulled out another chocolate bar… and then a few more. ‘Looks like I’ve got one for everyone, and a couple of –‘ He shoved them all back into his pockets when the cactus stepped out of the wheat.

                ‘Oh, hello.’ It blinked at them, voice soft and pleasant and at odds with it – her – appearance. ‘Have you by any chance seen a Kapurimon run by?’

                ‘If it’s silver and it bites, then it went that way.’ Izumi pointed. ‘With my chocolate.’

She was well aware that was petty, but still…

The cactus simply bowed in gratitude and took off. Junpei stifled a giggle. ‘That’s petty.’

                ‘I know, but I don’t care. Right now, anyway.’

                ‘In the moment,’ he mused. ‘Guess you just need the right company to be yourself without any backlash. Then again, everybody’s so different, there’s bound to be backlash at some point between any two people, regardless of who they are.’ He stretched. ‘Interacting with people sure is tough and complicated.’

                ‘Sure is,’ Izumi agreed. She could have said something else, there. Maybe if she’d been someone else, she would have. But she didn’t. After all, she shut down communications that looked like they weren’t working. She cut her losses early on. Getting along with people and then getting into an argument later down the track was different… Or was it? Betrayal was a sharp knife, after all.

She’d find out eventually. No group of five (or six, technically) kids could fight for survival in a world and not argue at some point or other.

.

The green cactus came back, and so does the silver chocolate-nabbing Kapurimon, and the cactus introduced herself as Togemon.

It was nice not to have to call her “cactus” anymore, because she was actually quite sweet. She brought them to her school and introduced her students, and then sat them all down for a snack.

It was Bokomon and Neemon who were a little rowdy, but only because they’d somehow wound up at the school too.

                ‘Well, I am glad you’re alright,’ Bokomon said, once they’d all gotten back up and checked the stools (and thankfully, none were broken, because they weren’t exactly handymen). ‘Where are the others?’

                ‘We couldn’t find them,’ Junpei shrugged, ‘even with a bird’s eye view.’

                ‘Oh, you turned into Blitzmon again? I would have loved to see that.’

Izumi couldn’t help but laugh at his starry eyes. He looked like a fanboy, though he wore the look far better than people their own age tended to. They were at the point where they were growing out of such looks… except maybe Tomoki.

                ‘You can do that whenever you want?’ Neemon wondered aloud.

Bokomon grumbled, but the humans glanced at each other. ‘Hey, that’s right,’ Junpei groaned. ‘I was stuck as Grumblemon for _ages_. And now he turns around and attacks me as soon as I’ve gotten another spirit. I guess these guys are the jealous types?’

                ‘Jealous or completely antagonistic,’ Izumi said thoughtfully. ‘After all, if what we thought before is true, the spirits we’re using now are the most ill-suited for us. They’re practically antagonistic, so maybe this is the end result of that.’ She was silent for a moment, before adding: ‘Of course, along the same vein, once you’ve gotten the right spirit, you should be the stronger one of the pair. It was only because you were exhausted that we never worked that out.’

                ‘Not necessarily,’ Junpei frowned. ‘The pairings aren’t really to our advantage. Take mine. Thunder’s not that effective against the earth, because it absorbs all the shocks. And Takuya. Water trumps fire all the time. And Tomoki. Fire melts ice… Though if Takuya takes that spirit, we shouldn’t have a rampaging Agunimon, right?’

Izumi shrugged. ‘I wasn’t expecting a rampaging anything…’

                ‘Rampaging digimon?’ the students piped up. ‘Like the Tortomon who made the fields?’

They’d forgotten their company.

                ‘Oh, what a lovely idea,’ said Togemon, cutting through the sudden awkward silence. ‘Let’s have these humans tell you a story.’

Junpei grinned. ‘Stories, I can do.’ And he launched right into something that _had_ to be fiction. But the students – the in-training digimon – soaked it right up.

Izumi watched him silently. He had a way with words that came out the best while telling stories like that, and worst when in situations that socially demanded empathy (and, in that, he shared her tendency to stick their foot in their mouth). It was interesting, and she could see why it would be a problem when dealing with one’s own age-group, but for younger people… He’d be one of those kids who’d go back to volunteer with the elementary school when he was in senior high. Who’d maybe think about becoming an elementary school teacher because he had such a way with kids (unless his interests lied elsewhere, and they probably did with how much he knew about technology). Who probably surrounded himself with the wrong sort of people, wrong age-group. Who felt more at home with the lot of them, all younger by at least a year, than with his own classmates.

Being in the Digital World had made that so plain.

So what about her then? She could easily see herself with butting heads with Takuya, or Junpei, or both of them, but they hadn’t yet. Tomoki was… well, she didn’t often spend a lot of time amongst people younger than her, but he kept up surprisingly well. It’d scared them all, when he’d accidentally set the forest on fire. But they were learning, slowly learning, from all of that. Maybe she was learning something about getting along with others too, something she hadn’t managed at camp where she thought she would, something she’d never managed to grasp when amongst her classmates here.

They put it down to cultural differences and adjusting, then to the general approach to foreigners (even though she wasn’t technically a foreigner; she’d just moved away for a few years), and they’d been aware that she bore some of the responsibility herself, but the question then was: how much did she put up with? How much did she compromise? She never wound up compromising at all.

Wood matched her quite well, when she thought about it like that. But wood was so stiff. So hard to walk with. Maybe that was her lesson to learn. How to be flexible without changing herself drastically.

                ‘You’ve got a serious look on your face,’ said Togemon, sidling up to her. Junpei had the attention of everyone else in the room… except the Kapurimon, who was staring at the pair of them instead. ‘It looks like Kapurimon has taken an interest in you.’

She could be petty. She would have been petty and turned her head, even if Junpei had given her another bar of chocolate and, really, was the only one to lose anything in that encounter.

Or maybe it was because Kapurimon was so tiny and cute when it grumbled. Or maybe it was the Digital World already changing her. But she thought she could not be petty this once.

She offered a hand instead. Kapurimon snubbed her, but later, when he’d run off and she’d plucked him out of a tree, that tentative friendship based on common behaviours was formed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting the A/N here instead, because I changed that episode a little more drastically than I meant to. Didn’t originally mean to leave Tsunomon out, but then Kapurimon’s behaviour stuck out to me in that episode as well and this was a good opportunity to address that, while looking at Izumi’s character in a slightly different light. I love the Tsunomon/Gabumon situation, but it doesn’t have any bearing on this story, sadly. Which means I’ll need to do something else with that another time to keep the Frontier muse happy, but Kapurimon just fit better with where I was going for this chapter, and the Tsunomon/Gabumon situation would have been a red herring (plus, if you’ve seen Frontier, you know it anyway. Trying not to repeat things too faithfully because where’s the fun in that? XD)
> 
> This is technically this week’s chapter, not last week, which means I didn’t get the second of either week’s chapters written, but I’ve got time to backlog now so we’ll see how that goes. I’m on the coast now and the internet is very limited from tomorrow (this was the freebie), so I’ll be writing but I can’t post until I get back to the city. So enjoy until the end of October, and then I’ll be off to another placement soon after so there’ll be another pile at the end of November, by which time I hope to be caught up… but we’ll see!


	22. Rain the Flood (Junpei)

Grumblemon appeared so suddenly, right at the climax of Junpei’s tale. Togemon, ever the diligent teacher, was the first to spot the water leaking into the school.

It was Neemon’s shriek of “oh, it’s that earth spirit again!” that got them moving. And Neemon was right. It was Grumblemon labouring through the fields.

That didn’t explain the water though. Until Togemon shrieked: ‘river’.

Neither Junpei nor Izumi had come across the river, but the child digimon panicked. ‘Our school will flood!’

Well, Junpei certainly wasn’t going to stand for that. And from the look of anger that had crossed Izumi’s, neither was she.

He flew out. She tripped her way through the grains but he saw it first: Grumblemon striking the ground again and again, and the water spilling past the river-bank as it cracked. It would break entirely soon enough. Then the fields and the school both would be swept away. And those tiny child digimion wouldn’t be able to stand up against the onslaught of water that was coming.

Unfortunately, neither of them were built to withstand hits from a hammer either. And lightning might do more harm than good with an entire river involved.

                ‘Any ideas?’ he asked Izumi, before realising she hadn’t caught up yet. ‘Drat.’ He frowned in the air. _Well, that’s one advantage…_

It wasn’t a very good one, but whatever worked. ‘Hey!’ he yelled, louder. Grumblemon looked up. ‘Yeah, I’m looking at you, you cast-off!’

And then he flew out of reach of the hammer, glad that part of the plan was going smoothly. _Now to keep up the annoying bee act…_

It was harder than it sounded, especially since humans weren’t built to fly but that was becoming more and more natural. Blitzmon just fit him in a way Grumblemon never had, even with the addition of wings. There was something about the thin armour coating his body, the wings buzzing behind him like lightning waiting to strike, the hum of electricity under his skin… He’d never had any of that back in the human world, but at the same time it felt like he was exposing something from within himself, something whose existence he hadn’t been aware of until now.

Maybe that was what Ofanimon had decided for them, when she brought them into this game of destiny.

 _Whose destiny?_ He wondered.

How had he never thought of that before? How had _none_ of them ever thought of that before?

That thought brought him up short. It also left him open to a blow from Grumblemon’s hammer, sending him crashing into the water.

Izumi arrived at that moment, whipping out a retractable arm to drag him out.

He spluttered on the banks, there, as Grumblemon brought down his hammer on the opposite bank –

Before the earth spirit paused to smash fire darts out of the sky instead.

                ‘Hey!’ Takuya’s voice yelled. Junpei squinted.

_A toy aeroplane?_

And it was Ranamon and Agunimon in the toy aeroplane, along with the pilot who dropped the warriors off and then zipped away.

Agunimon sent more fire darts, and the pair of them were suddenly locked in a parry while Junpei shook his wings out and Takuya whipped out a rain cloud. ‘Back away!’ he yelled finally, and Agunimon leapt across the bank as the rain descended.

It stayed on the other side of the bank, thankfully, and Grumblemon howled and swung his hammer blindly.

Unfortunately, the water softened the banks as well, and the water gurgled over.

                ‘The river’s already flooding,’ Izumi snapped.

Takuya swore and stopped his rain cloud. Grumblemon struggled up. The other warriors took stock of the situation, muddy and soaked and a hindrance to pretty much all of them.

It was Izumi who came up with the solution, in the end, crossing the bank and dragging Grumblemon further back. Junpei and Tomoki dashed over to help, since both of them were useless when it came to stopping a flood.

Really, anyone but the spirit of water was useless, in a sense. It was almost a pity the spirit of earth wasn’t on their side anymore… but if this was how they were going to act, it was probably for the best.

It didn’t occur to him that they were still missing Kouichi until after they were well clear of Takuya and the river, and the surrounds were cackling with electricity and flying fists as they tried to crack Grumblemon’s clay armour. Grumblemon parried them, but he was sluggish and finally, _finally_ , his earth body was beginning to crack.

He hadn’t used his beast spirit though. That would be a whole other problem to deal with.

For some reason, he didn’t, still. Even when he stumbled away from them and they followed. Even when thin cracks began to run down his abdomen. _Why?_ Junpei wondered. Why had he hammered away at the banks until they broke? Why hadn’t he transformed into something stronger when he was getting pummelled?

Why had he come there to begin with, when he’d sent them flying in different directions. Surely, if Tomoki and Takuya had already been on their way, then Kouichi on his own was the most vulnerable one?

Had he been thinking of type match-ups? Or was he chasing Junpei specifically, because Junpei had been the one to wield those spirits that were now Grumblemon and Grumblemon alone? There was no way to know in that instance. Not unless he escaped and gave chance and escaped again, but that cycling would cause so much damage, if this scene was anything to go by…

In the end, he didn’t transform. He simply fled.

And that was another thing. How could they fight something they knew nothing about?

.

They went back to the river. It was completely dry and they thought, for a moment, that the water had flooded out into the fields before they realised the fields were dry as well.

They found Takuya and Tomoki a little further away… and Ranamon, with blistered skin and howling and summoning a rain cloud bigger than anything Takuya had ever managed to call forth.

Takuya and Tomoki were, in comparison, both drenched and both very human.

                ‘What in the world happened?’ Junpei asked… though he could guess. It had happened to him too.

                ‘Takuya stopped the flood,’ said Tomoki, because Takuya was on his knees and looking too tired to form the words. ‘Sent all that water into the clouds – and then Agunimon’s leaving my D-scanner and jumping into his, and Ranamon pops up, screaming like she’s been burnt and looking the part.’

They’d missed the screams. But considering it would have been more likely to be friend than foe, it was a good thing they had.

Ranamon, at least, was an easier problem to deal with. Junpei charged at her, electricity tingling within his horns. She dove into the dry river to escape him, scrambling in the mud. He chased her easily. She was fast, but so was he (though the sudden humidity, courtesy of Takuya, was slowing him down). It would rain soon, and that rain would favour Ranamon, but until then she was slowed by her blistering skin and the lack of river water, and he was bolstered by the conductivity before it became too dangerous again to let an electrical charge loose.

She didn’t have time to summon rain clouds escaping him, and Takuya had never revealed any non-water based powers.

She shot a jet of steam at his wings. He hissed and landed, flapping hard to rid himself of the sudden pain.

By the time he was back in the air again, she’d escaped and rain, natural rain, was pouring down from the sky.

.

They took shelter in the school, mercifully undamaged except for the water that had soaked into the floor. ‘Oh,’ said Togemon, sounding both relieved and delighted. ‘There are more of you.’

Bokomon scanned them. ‘No Kouichi?’ he asked.

                ‘The ToyAgumon are looking,’ Tomoki replied. ‘There’s a whole army of them, you know. And they keep tabs on pretty much the entire Digital World.’

                ‘Useful,’ said Junpei, appreciatively. ‘If we had a way to contact them, we could keep tabs on all our enemies. Though I guess that’s dangerous thinking, too,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘So I guess we find Kouichi, then continue heading to the Venus Rose. Or just head there, since Kouichi was the one who wanted to go in the first place and he’s surely not going to go in another direction to look for us unless he’s sure we’re there.’

                ‘I don’t know about the rest of you,’ Takuya groaned. ‘But I’d like a nap first. A really long nap.’

That… actually sounded like a brilliant idea. ‘After a good sleep,’ Junpei agreed. ‘Oh, I’ve got chocolate for everyone too.’

And it wasn’t just his pockets that felt lighter when he’d handed those out (with a bar broken into smaller pieces for the child digimon, and another split between Bokomon and Neemon). There was just one bar left in his pocket now, for Kouichi whenever they found him.

And now there was both Grumblemon and Ranamon on the loose. And while Wolfmon didn’t have any particular weaknesses to either of them, he wasn’t exactly strong against them either.

It occurred to him a little later, as he lay in one of the little huts in the field, trying to sleep, that that wasn’t quite true. He may have no particular weakness or strength against Wolfmon, but he had several weaknesses against Ranamon. Water reflected light, after all, and Kouichi was particularly sensitive to that (even if he wasn’t walking around with his eyes completely covered anymore). And then there was the issue with the rain and Kouichi relying more on sound than sight to fight. It worked when fighting in the tunnels. It would work fighting spooky ninjas too, probably, if they came across any such thing in the Digital World (and why not? With all the different sorts of digimon they’d already seen…). It wouldn’t work so well with the rain as a distractor. And there was also the fact that Wolfmon shot lasers out of his eyes, putting one of his two known attacks out of commission.

And considering his own spirit in the same out of the box manner, he wasn’t as strong against Ranamon as he’d liked to think. Ranamon was smaller, and faster, and could control the humidity of the atmosphere (and so had more control over the weather than he did). Water conducted electricity, but she could easily create a setting in which it would be too dangerous to unleash a torrent of electricity. And changing the moisture in the air changed the water lightning travelled, which meant he had to take more care. Blitzmon wasn’t used to fighting in the rain, so Junpei had to do all the thinking.

He took that thought and processed it. Blitzmon was a spirit, like Grumblemon and Ranamon. That meant that, judging from the other two and how they’d jumped out of the D-scanners with minds of their own, the spirits all had some level of independent thought.

But they’d been lumps of something or other when they’d first found them. So they’d been asleep? Or dormant? And being with them, or in their D-scanners, had woken them up. At some point they left… and was it a lovely coincidence it was when the spirits better suited to them accepted them, or was that on purpose? Was acceptance rejection in reverse?

He didn’t think that was the case though. It wasn’t until Takuya controlled a flood that he lost Ranamon, and if that wasn’t gaining some sense of synergy with the water spirit, Junpei wasn’t sure what would qualify. And then there was his own circumstances, though they weren’t as ground-breaking. He’d just felt a sense of finding his role, his place in a team and that had always been important to him but also something that had mostly eluded him. He’d found it then, though, when he’d smashed the locks with a hammer nobody else could wield, with a precision he’d been trusted with while everybody else were occupied in the roles they had to play…

He’d found his place, and then suddenly it had changed. At least it hadn’t pulled the rug out from under his feet entirely. That would have sucked. Blitzmon was an upgrade, not a change. Or should have been. Grumblemon attacking them threw a wrench in that idealistic interpretation.

Which brought him back to that issue, of Grumblemon and, now, Ranamon as well.

Maybe turning the chessboard would work here. Because if he could find weaknesses against Ranamon, he could find strengths against Grumblemon.

In terms of pure strength, Grumblemon was stronger, but Junpei wondered if he hadn’t developed some upper body strength when swinging that hammer around himself. It was possible. Either that or Blitzmon had some decent upper body strength as it was, because his attacks involved electrically charged punches and upper-body tackles.

So, upper body strength. Grumblemon couldn’t do much without the hammer, at least. There was that. Which changed if he turned into that other guy, though. The one who’d sent them all flying.

Exhibit two was electricity versus earth. Earth didn’t conduct very well, but they’d proven on two occasions that it wasn’t completely useless. Sadly, both of those had been with the help of Ranamon, and they no longer had the water spirits. Still, there was mother nature, rivers, the ocean…. Plenty of sources of opportunistic water, if only the opportunities were on their side.

Exhibit three was flight, and that was one advantage he clearly had. Which he’d used to his advantage on the river bank. But he had to be careful to not get distracted, because distraction hand him pummelling into the river.

Izumi pulled him out this time, but that wouldn’t happen all the time, and could Blitzmon even swim? Though he supposed that didn’t matter. _He_ could swim, even if Grumblemon had negated the need to do that the last time they’d been faced with a huge body of water. Or was it the time before? They’d found the ice spirit no-one could move the last time, hadn’t they?

How long had they even been in this world?

His light pockets suddenly felt too light. He slipped his hands in and felt the last bar of chocolate and his stomach growled.

_No. I’m saving that one for Kouichi._

And the sheer unfairness of it if he ate it himself kept him from taking the packet out.

It was his own fault though, really. He brought chocolate bars with most of his pocket money, and the reasons were two-fold. Everyone loved chocolate, so naturally he could offer it to his friends. Except it didn’t always work, and when it did, the effect of it didn’t last very long. They’d thank him, eat the chocolate, and then move over to other people and he’d be wondering where he’d gone wrong.

He knew now. He’d been trying too hard.

And the second reason was more anxious eating. Whenever his thoughts started going in circles and he felt like he’d be crushed by the weight of it all. His mother told him he might want to lay off a little, and exercise a little more. He only did the latter: rode a bicycle a lot but that didn’t trim down the fat he’d put on over the school years. His doctor was less nice about it. Told him kids like him got diabetes and heart problems and all sorts of other nasty things. Told him kids like him turned into those couch potato adults who busted their kidneys and their veins and their nerves and their heart and brain and died while their parents were still fit.

That didn’t make him feel better about himself, though.

Except these guys never said anything like that. They didn’t comment on his weight at all. Didn’t comment on why he was carrying so much chocolate around. They commented instead on other things. Like his words. Like the spirit he’d picked up. Like his story-telling skills (and Izumi, at least, was suitably impressed) and he hadn’t really been trying, here. He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t. Maybe it was because they had to work together. Maybe it was because they were all younger, and he didn’t know them, and none of them really knew each other so they were all in the same boat: confused and lost. He didn’t have any niches he had to break into. There wasn’t a way he was expected to behave, or a way he was expected to look, or be. He could be himself, and by letting him be himself, he could find himself. And that journey had led him from earth to lightning being chased by earth.

_And now I have to do something about that…_

He laughed quietly to himself. He was thinking too much again, when he wanted to sleep. But at least these thoughts would be useful. Constructive thinking. Problem solving. Grumblemon was a puzzle they needed to work out, and work out fast. Ranamon was the next, and if Ranamon had popped up, who else would wind up being added to the crew? Not Agunimon…

And what did that mean for Tomoki, who suddenly found himself without a spirit and a way to defend himself?

A little selfishly, he counted himself lucky he wasn’t in a circumstance like that. Feeling powerless was never a pleasant thing.

Was that, then, the struggle of Grumblemon and Ranamon? Were they afraid they’d stop existing, now that they’d been cut loose? Was it impossible to manage two conflicting spirits together? Or was there something else, something connecting all the dots, that they were yet to come across?


	23. Black Tunnel (Kouichi)

Kouichi didn’t register the significance of being alone straight away, because he was used to waking to an empty house. It didn’t mean he liked it – because he didn’t – but it happened a lot since his mother was often working the graveyard shifts nobody else wanted.

It paid the bills, she’d say. And they needed her, because who else would willingly take graveyard shifts? Kouichi still thought it was unfair, because they’d made it work before they’d found someone they could pile them all on, and they’d make it work if they ever lost her. But he also knew his mother would keep on doing them, because living was expensive, no matter how frugal they tried to be.

And until he was old enough to get a proper job instead of babysitting for the kids in the apartment above them or helping the kind old lady next door with the housework, there isn’t a whole lot he can do about that. His classmates didn’t understand either, why he never hung around before or after school, why he wasn’t a part of any clubs, why he rarely went to the weekend scrimmages they hold. He could help with the housework, at least. Do his own dishes before school so his mother was only cleaning the ones she uses during the day. Sweep every odd day so she wasn’t working a broom or a mop when she should be resting her back. It wasn’t hard; elementary school wasn’t that demanding and their apartment was small. The hard thing was getting more than just a tired wan smile on his mother’s face.

He wasn’t doing enough. His classmates said that, when he’d rather go home than hang around after-school. His teachers said that, when he didn’t sign up for any clubs or socialise with his friends (though that’s really the only complaint they have, because he participated in class and got decent marks and did all his homework and all that, because he really didn’t want a detention). Even his mother said that sometimes, but she said it with trembling hands and a sore back and bags under her eyes, so he couldn’t bring himself to obey her. Because if he didn’t help, then all those things will just be worse, and they were bad enough.

That made him remember he’s been away for at least a week now. _She’d be worried sick,_ he thought guiltily.

                ‘Do you want to go home?’

He jumped. He was sure he’d been alone and, though he’d been keeping an eye and ear out, he hadn’t seen or heard anything.

And yet, DarkTrailmon was parked behind him as though there was a station there, and Kouichi didn’t even remember seeing _tracks._

                ‘Do you want to go home?’ DarkTrailmon repeated.

Did he want to go home? Of course he did, but he was alone. There was an issue with that, because there were six humans in this world, and until he woke up here, he’d been with four of them.

                ‘What’s more important to you?’ the DarkTrailmon wondered aloud, when Kouichi didn’t answer his initial question. ‘Your family, or your new friends?’

                ‘…that’s not a fair question.’ And that was a non-answer he gave in return. Turnabout was fair play, he supposed.

                ‘Which do you want to go to? I can take you there.’

Ah. So DarkTrailmon’s questions had a purpose then. But DarkTrailmon was a problem in and of itself. He remembered the other time he’d ridden him. How he and Takuya had stumbled their way into the light again.

Not to say that would be a common occurrence, because the Trailmon that Tomoki, Izumi and Junpei had been on had left them stranded mid-air and Bokomon swore up and down that Trailmon _usually_ kept all their wheels on the ground.

                ‘You’ll have plenty of time to think about which you want on the way there,’ DarkTrailmon offered.

                ‘You’re offering me a free ride?’ Kouichi checked. ‘Why?’

                ‘You won’t go anywhere standing still,’ the DarkTrailmon returned.

…was he like the Digital World’s Cheshire cat?

.

The inside of the DarkTrailmon was pretty normal looking, despite Kouichi’s apprehension. He sat on one of the longer seats, where he could stretch out of the journey was long. And who knew how long the journey would be, when he didn’t even know where he was going.

Game… why did that female voice call it a game? That made it seem less consequential, but this… this felt too real to be just a virtual game. And shouldn’t there be contracts or something? Tossing six kids into these circumstances and expecting them to figure things out on the way was akin to kidnapping, unless their parents had agreed beforehand…

He didn’t know about the others, but he was pretty sure his mother would _never_ agree to something like this. And it wasn’t just that she’d worry. No matter what the return would be, she didn’t want to put him in the sort of situation that would make her dependent on him. ‘It’s the parent’s job to look after their children,’ she’d say. She too often refused even the smatterings he made while babysitting, saying it was his and he’d earned it and he should treat himself instead. So he saved it for presents and some of his own expenses: bus fares and stationary and that sort of thing, and sometimes books from the second hand store and no-one can accuse him for not indulging himself (even if everybody still does).

Still, when they realised they were stuck with no way home, they’d sort of just gone along with things. Now though…

_‘Do you want to go home?’_

Yes, of course he wanted to go home. But what about the others? If this was a game in the sense of being virtual, and lacking consequences if they lost or took penalties or caused collateral damage along the way, then he’d still be abandoning five people here (one of whom was his own brother). On the other hand, if he didn’t take the chance to go home, his mother…

The only way out of that would be to pick up the others, then go home with everyone, and that was assuming this world was just virtual and didn’t actually need help – which was a far leap to made, considering the information at their disposal. It just felt too real. And Bokomon and Neemon, and their spirits that didn’t quite fit with them…

‘One trip only,’ DarkTrailmon spoke up.

Well, that got rid of that possibility, anyway. He did have to choose.

If this world really did need help, or if the others were in trouble, was there even any choice? It took all of them to manage the factory, and even then Grumblemon got the best of them.

_But ‘kaa-san…_

He slumped sideways on the seats. He was just going in circles like this. Too many ifs and buts but he had to make a decision despite all of that.

When it came to worry, of course his mother would worry the most.

When it came to need… Did his mother even need him?

He screamed silently and shut his eyes. _Don’t even go there!_ But he couldn’t help but go there, because his mother only had to work so hard because he was there. His mother often couldn’t get second dates because he was there, because few people wanted a woman with a pre-teen child. And he knew his mother wouldn’t accept someone who wouldn’t tolerate him, but at the same time that meant he was holding her back.

Usually he preferred his mother’s friends’ version: he was a damn good filter. And it made him feel a bit better when they used him as an excuse to test their own dates, because why not? But that didn’t mean he could always believe it. And when his mother would say she was never lonely because she knew he’d be home waiting for her, he could believe it sometimes and, sometimes not. And, sometimes, she worried out loud he was the lonely one, because she was never there in the mornings when he left for school and often left before he’d gone to bed, and he didn’t have any friends close enough to invite over (mainly because he never spent time with them outside of school).

And right now, no-one was there to tell him one way or the other, so his thoughts ran rampant.

.

He must have fallen asleep, because when he woke up, the train was gone. And, this time, it was pitch black.

Night vision didn’t help if there wasn’t some source of light, somewhere. He shuffled forward blindly, remembering how Takuya had almost stepped off the platform and a train had dropped him off so presumably there’d be a platform.

He shuffled into something taller than him and warm, instead. Too familiar and warm, and with the smell of hospital grade antiseptic clinging like it did to any set of clothes his mother wore to work.

But why was it so dark? Why couldn’t he see her?

                ‘’kaa-san?’

A hand came up to stroke his hair. ‘Kou-chan,’ she said gently.

He buried his face into her chest. ‘It’s dark.’ It came out almost a whimper.

The hand gently flicked his bangs. ‘The light hurts your eyes.’ And that was just stating the fact. Not encouraging. Not discouraging. Not giving her own opinion.

He remembered DarkTrailmon’s words. _‘You’ll have time to think on the way there.’_

_I’m not anywhere right now._

He felt a rush of gratitude anyway. If this was the dream, or DarkTrailmon’s doing, or reality… Even if he was just talking to a figment of his imagination with his mother’s voice…

                ‘I’m sorry.’ It still wasn’t easy to say.

The hand stilled.

                ‘I left without even leaving a note, and it’s been ages and I still –‘

                ‘You didn’t come back.’

He freezes. But then his mother’s hand is rubbing his back gently like his grandmother used to, when he was too young to be at home alone. Some argued he was still too young, but what choice was there now? His grandmother had gotten too old for apartment steps, and now she was gone.

He didn’t come back. But he hadn’t chosen yet, had he?

                ‘I – ‘ he began, and then stopped. What would he say?

He should have just told her what his grandmother had said. Even if it was something she clearly didn’t want to talk about, because he’d gone chasing after it anyway and made that confrontation inevitable.

It wouldn’t have had to be like this then. But he was never good at grabbing bulls by their horns.

                ‘Obaa-chan told me,’ he began. He wished he could see her face. And in the next moment, was glad he couldn’t. ‘That I have a twin brother.’

Her body stiffened.

It was remarkable how much one could make out, even without their sight. Or make up, as the case might have been. But, for now, this was just as real.

He closed his own eyes. No point having them open when he couldn’t see anything, after all.

                ‘I should have mentioned it then, but I – I wondered why you’d never said anything before. And I was confused, because that was like a justification for why ‘tou-san didn’t even try to keep in contact. The same reason you poured everything into me even though you had another son, when I’d spent so long thinking he’d just abandoned us, but maybe… I don’t know.’ The words stalled. The thoughts swirled.

                ‘But if you accused your father of that now, you’d accuse me too?’ his mother asked.

                ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

                ‘And do you?’ she asked, after a pause.

 _Do I?_ He wondered. As a young child whose father suddenly vanished from his life, it was easy to blame him. But now, he knew it was more complicated than that. Really, he’d known as he grew older but it was just easier to keep on blaming the invisible figure, the shadow in his memories. ‘I’m to blame too, for forgetting.’

She hugged him tightly. ‘Young children see everything but remember almost nothing,’ she said softly. ‘As the adults, we bear more of the fault. And for keeping quiet about things you’d eventually know…’

Well, he’d done exactly the same thing.

                ‘Where did you go?’ his mother prompted, when the silence comfortably stretched.

                ‘Shibuya,’ Kouichi replied. ‘But I somehow wound up in another world.’

                ‘Oh?’ There’s no opinion in her tone again. No judgement.

It’s not real. But it’s also okay, because he can say all of this again. The first time’s the harder one.

                ‘Mmm. There are six of us. And the natural inhabitants called Digimon.’ And he babbled a bit after that, giving snippets he wasn’t sure anyone who hadn’t been there could string together, but his mother just hummed and didn’t comment until the words stopped tumbling out of his mouth.

                ‘Do they need you there?’ she asked, finally.

Did they? Was it egotistical to think “yes”?

No, he didn’t think so. They’d stormed the factory because they’d been together… sans Kouji, but that was an issue they’d been attempting to rectify. As for why they were there… There had to be a reason. The mysterious voice on their D-scanners called it a game, but the world seemed far too intricate for that. Bokomon told them old stories, old legends. Told them about the current world wherein the three Angels had faded from the public scene without warning, leaving an ominous echo behind.

                ‘I think they do,’ he said finally. ‘And I need them too.’

He wouldn’t have found his way out of that black space without Takuya, and Takuya would have fallen off the platform and landed who knew where without him, and that was just their first meeting.

                ‘We need each other,’ he repeated.

                ‘Then it’s okay,’ said his mother. ‘Just come back safely, when you’re done. And introduce these new friends of yours.’

                ‘And Kouji.’ Because he was going to find Kouji, even if he had made it harder for himself by not speaking up when he had the chance.

                ‘And Kouji,’ his mother agreed.

Her touch lightened, then vanished, and DarkTrailmon’s voice was in his ears again. ‘Sounds like you’ve made your choice.’

Kouichi opened his mouth to ask, but thought against it. He didn’t really need to know the specifics. He opened his eyes and sat up instead.

Outside the train were rows of… was that wheat?

                ‘End of the line,’ said DarkTrailmon. ‘See you around, kid.’

‘Thank you,’ Kouichi replied, stepping out of the train and into the wheat field.

The DarkTrailmon vanished into a cloud of smoke, like it had never been there to begin with. And again, Kouichi wondered how it had gotten there in the first place. There were no tracks. No station. Just wheat that reached up over his head.

                ‘Kouichi!’

He turned. Ah, there were all the others. And a tall green cactus that he wondered how he’d missed before.

                ‘Where have you been?’ Tomoki asked. ‘The ToyAgumon couldn’t find you at all.’

                ‘DarkTrailmon was giving me a lift.’ Kouichi blinked. ToyAgumon?

                ‘DarkTrailmon,’ Takuya repeated. ‘Did he get you lost again?’

                ‘Kind of.’ He hadn’t really wandered very far this time. ‘It was more… helping me work a few things out.’ He tugged at his sleeves. His mother had been right about him being lonely, hadn’t she? Not that it invalidated him saying the same to her. ‘I’m going to talk to my mother when we get back. And maybe… my father too.’

                ‘That’s great!’ Izumi hugged him suddenly. ‘It’s so much easier to just ignore things, you know.’

Until they went and exploded, anyway.

                ‘…wait, so you haven’t run into Grumblemon or Ranamon?’ Junpei checked.

                ‘…no?’ _Ranamon?_

His mystified look reminded the others he’d missed a few things.

 _Scratch that_ , he thought, once they’d finished breakfast (he’d been on the DarkTrailmon all _night!)_ and explaining things. He’d missed a _lot._

 


	24. Venus Rose (Kouji)

No-one recalled a time before the first beast vs. human digimon war. It was just like that: two different fractions of digimon fighting for a better world for themselves, and that meant worse for the others. The fighting was endless, and without end, until Lucemon rose up with his glittering white wings and his ideals.

Few listened, at first. But slowly, the number grew because the digimon were tired of fighting. They wanted peace. And so they followed Lucemon until there was enough of them to quell all the fighting, and obtain that peace.

And so Lucemon ruled the digimon with that ideal in mind, until the crown he wore sunk into his head and made his heart rot. And then he began to oppress all digimon, human and beast alike, until another force swept up: the legendary warriors who sealed him away.

But that had taken all their power, and so they fell into the soil and slumbered. The digimon decided, then, that one being could not be trusted to rule over them all. And so they elected a council.

And the three Angels came to rule the Digital World.

There was Seraphimon, who resided over law and order from his castle in the Forest Domain.

There was Ofanimon, who resided of life and love from her castle in the Gardens of Light.

And, finally, there was Cherubimon who resided over all knowledge from the Venus Rose: the glittering star of the Dark Continent.

At first, the Dark Continent was a refuge and a place for help to be sought. If there was a quarrel, then to Seraphimon they would go. If there was a virus, then to Ofanimon, but all other manner of troubles (including the viruses Ofanimon may not know how to treat) came to Cherubimon’s domain where they wouldn’t be judged and where they could find the answers they sought.

But then something changed. Whispers of Lucemon stirring began to rise up from the lands. And then Ofanimon vanished from her castle. And then a digimon who’d gone to see Seraphimon came back, screaming about how he slumbered in crystals and the doors to the Dark Continent slammed shut, locking in whatever secret it kept and Cherubimon as well.

And so anarchy slowly swept through the Digital World, along with the whispers of Lucemon’s resurrection.

And here was the one place that contained the truth of it all: the Venus Rose.

.

Angler had told quite the story, but Kouji knew he couldn’t afford to ignore it. The Venus Rose Star loomed above him now, and beneath it, the castle of the same name. That castle was his destination, he supposed. There wasn’t anything else on this Continent that served as a landmark.

Unless one counted the Trailmon Graveyard, and he’d already gotten all the information and supplies he could carry from there.

So now it’s the castle: the star he’s been following since emerging in this godforsaken continent.

The doors are open and unguarded. He’s immediately suspicious, but he still makes it indoors without trouble. The hallways are likewise empty, winding well past his sight and it’s dark.

Somehow, without the light of the Venus Rose, it’s darker than anything else he’s seen on this continent. He wished the glowing moss had survived till now but it hadn’t. It died far too quickly.

So he had to stumble along in the dark, until the open door had vanished too and he couldn’t even see his feet in front of him.

He was tempted to call out. But that would be foolishness. If there were enemies hiding, he wouldn’t hear them coming over his own echoes and they’d know exactly where he was. And who knew what dangers lurked in this castle.

_But you’re still here._

What choice did he have, though? He’d been wandering blind since he got here, so sneaking around a castle wasn’t that different. And though he couldn’t see where he was going, he at least knew which way to go.

Until he hit a wall, anyway. And that was bound to happen because who designed a walk-through castle?

.

Predictably, he hit a wall. And then he stopped there because it was dangerous to turn one way or another without some sort of a plan. It was also dangerous to walk blindly through a castle he knew next to nothing about, but he was doing it.

Sighing, he took out his D-scanner. Maybe there was a light function on it… which would also flag his position as well as his voice would, but at least wouldn’t impede his hearing.

There was. There was also a map and he stared at the blinking dot arching left and up.

He shrugged to himself and followed it. Why not? It led him up a flight of stairs and into a corridor.

And his little light bounced off mirrors and amplified the entire corridor.

That was when he saw the shadows. They were also amplified by the mirrors. Drifting aimlessly until they caught sight of him.

They shrieked and Kouji almost dropped his D-scanner in surprise. Luckily he didn’t, because the blinking dot seemed to lead to the other end of the corridor, and the shadows were diving at him.

Instinct told him to run back, but knowledge forced him to duck under the reaching hands and dash forward instead. The shadows give chase. He runs.

What would have happened if he didn’t have a light source? He can’t hear the shadows. He can only see them, diving in and out of mirrors. They’re silent wraiths, reaching for him with their long black fingers and he doesn’t know why. Is it because they’re that deprived? Because he’s alive and has substance and form? Because he’s human?

When he got to the end of the corridor, he understood. It was because of that… thing, that makes them reach for and reach away and scream in a way that didn’t make a sound.

.

The D-scanner was leading him to that thing: that black lump of something that sat on a pedestal, far from the mirrors.

It switches off when he was close enough to touch, and now he can only see that thing in front of him.

Why did it lead him here?

_Darkness…_

He blinked. That thought came out of nowhere. Or not. He’d been surrounded in darkness for a while, after all. Ever since he listened to that message.

 _I shouldn’t have._ And in another heartbeat: _regret._

He thought about that. Did he regret it? It was kind of hard when he hadn’t reached any logical conclusion yet. It was more that he was frustrated.

_Angry._

Wasn’t angry overdoing it a little?

But there was no-one and nothing here to temper him. Not his father knocking on his door whenever he got too wrapped up in staring at that photo of his mother. Not Satomi bringing snacks while he grumbled to himself or played the guitar until his fingers started to bleed. Not his martial art instructors dragging him off the mats before he kicked or punched too hard or dripped over his own two feet. Not his dog barking and scratching at his door before he could get stuck in his own head, or that girl from the flower shop telling him about flower meanings he didn’t care to know, but what kept him from thinking too deeply about what he was doing and who he was buying those flowers for.

_Not that it matters. I never picked them up._

_How long as it even been?_

Everything sort of melted together in the Dark Continent.

Everything was melting together now. And the darkness was his only companion. The darkness… and that thing in front of him.

_Isn’t that better than just darkness?_

It seemed too much like a trap, to him. Someone was baiting him. Someone wanted him to pick up that thing, whatever it was.

_What can it do? What will it do?_

Maybe nothing. Maybe it was pointless. Or maybe it was like a bomb and would blow him to pieces.

_I’m too impatient. If I stay here any longer, I’ll pick that thing up anyway._

What else could it be then? A tool; his weapon in this so-called destiny game?

But in a scene of darkness, wouldn’t light be the weapon?

Something tugged him as wrong in that thought. Maybe it was because the darkness was essentially a weapon, here. It was what kept him rooted to the spot. What made him stumble into the wall before. It was the light that guided him up the stairs, and through the corridor. But the darkness that reached for him.

He wasn’t scared of the darkness, per say. He didn’t need a night light to slumber. He just didn’t like it. Anything could be hiding in the darkness. He preferred to see where he was going.

It was easier at home, naturally, when he knew where everything was and it was his own job to clean his room so he’d have no trouble walking blind in it. It was very different in an unknown castle in an unknown world knowing only that there was something in front of him, and behind him a labyrinth of mirrors from which shadows reached out for him.

Logically, if this thing on the pedestal was the reason they hadn’t grabbed him when he stopped, then he should just carry it back with him.

But that still didn’t answer the question as to what it _was_.

_But if I don’t do anything, then why did I come here for?_

Did he leave and search some more, or did he accept what he was led here for.

He took out his D-scanner and tapped at its buttons, looking for that light source again.

It didn’t come.

Something else, however, did. That female voice that began this journey.

_‘Look for the light in the darkness.’_

Kouji blinked at the message, as the voice faded away. _Look for the light in the darkness._ What did that mean?

The voice answered.

_‘Take the spirit of darkness. That is your test.’_

And that was a proper answer. So the thing before him was the spirit of darkness. And she called it a test.

_So it’s not going to be all roses and sugar. I guess I knew that._

He frowned to himself. So he was supposed to take the spirits of darkness… and then look for the light within then? Well, he supposed, by definition, there had to be light for darkness, and darkness for light. But games usually listed the two as separate and opposing attributes so what was the female voice getting at?

No answer. He thought about it some more.

Moving away from the game concept, there was the simple existence of light and darkness, as illustrated by the yin-yang symbol. It was impossible for them to exist without each other, which meant the spirits of darkness had a light source as well. But that was so vague. What was light to a being? What was darkness?

Life and death. Hope and despair. There were many ways to abstractly define light and darkness and he had no idea which one she meant.

Maybe he’d know if he took those spirits.

He reached out before he changed his mind and wasted any more time, and gripped it tightly.

 _‘Find the light,’_ the female voice echoed, in his memories.

And another voice, this time male: ‘ _Destroy the light.’_

He stiffened, but it was too late to let go; it was already swallowing him. He fell, disconnected from his own body and tangled in the two voices, repeating their dichotomous words.

Female: ‘ _find the light.’_

And male: ‘ _destroy the light.’_


	25. Beast Spirits (Takuya)

Togemon had brought them that round candy again for morning tea by the time they’d caught each other up on their latest adventures. The DarkTrailmon had left before the others had even aught up with Kouichi, and the ToyAgumon left not soon after. Togemon, too, had gone back to the school and her students, leaving the five humans and two digimon to enjoy breakfast and conversation in her hut.

The first thing was trading stories. Kouichi’s was the quickest, but it was Takuya’s who was the most pressing, with Ranamon now on the loose as well. They still didn’t understand _why_ their spirits were suddenly boycotting. The advantage was that they now had more intuitive spirits, and hopefully that meant they’d be able to utilise them to their full potential and with more ease than the originals – but it wasn’t a conscious choice they’d made. That was no reason for their old spirits to take on physical form and attack them and their friends.

And who knew whether Grumblemon and Ranamon would wind up teaming up or not. Which could work for or against them, really, even if they did seem like total opposites at first glance.

And they still didn’t know what Grumblemon had managed to turn into.

                ‘I just don’t understand it.’ Bokomon flipped through the pages of his book again. ‘There’s nothing writing in here at all.’

                ‘Surely that book doesn’t cover every tiny thing,’ Takuya grumbled. The sound of rustling pages was starting to get annoying. ‘There’s only so much space in it.’

                ‘It’s not a tiny matter at all!’ Bokomon exclaimed. ‘Gigasmon had more raw power than the rest of you combined – though that’s really an approximation, because the five of you haven’t tried attacking him as one –‘

                ‘You don’t think it’ll work though,’ Junpei frowned. ‘Fair enough, I suppose. All the spirits, sans that Gigasmon, are pretty lithe.’

                ‘Built for manoeuvrability,’ Kouichi mused. ‘I wonder if that means Gigasmon is less mobile since he’s big and packing raw power.’ He blushed a moment later. ‘Uh, not that I mean all f– never mind.‘

                ‘We get you,’ Izumi laughed. ‘And good to know you stick your foot in your mouth as much as the rest of us.’

Takuya stared between them. ‘What’d he say?’ he asked.

Junpei shook his head, though he was laughing too. Kouichi hadn’t meant that as an insult at all, but he’d been conscientious enough to pick up the possibility of someone else interpreting it as such. But the way he’d stumbled over that was funny. The way he gave up on fixing it quickly enough, assuming his company knew what he meant and knew he didn’t mean anything else by it – or maybe he was just hoping.

Junpei snuck a glance. So did Takuya, curious about the blush that disappeared as quickly as it came. ‘Built for manoeuvrability?’ Takuya prompted. ‘So we’ve got the speedy multi-hit guys versus the power houses that can get a one hit KO but need to build up lots of exp and stuff to pull it off?’

‘Exp?’ Kouichi repeated, sounding confused.

‘Experience,’ Takuya explained. ‘Like, you know, in video games and stuff?’ At the blank look he received. ‘You don’t play video games?’

Kouichi shook his head.

‘Man, you’re missing out.’

Tomoki was equally horrified, and they spent the next little while off the beaten path as they explained the wonders of gaming to Kouichi… and an equally clueless Bokomon and Neemon too.

.

‘So… Gigasmon,’ Izumi said, when the boys finally quieted down. ‘How come the rest of us can’t magically turn into a powerhouse version of ourselves?’

That was the other question.

‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘I don’t know how practical it would be to be stuck with just a powerhouse, but between the five of us, it would be handy if at least one of us could deal with power

‘Grumblemon had been our best bet before.’

                ‘Funny how the problem had been control, then,’ Junpei mumbled.

                ‘Yeah…’ Tomoki agreed. ‘Takuya, did you have any trouble with the flames?’

                ‘No,’ Takuya answered, surprised. ‘Not at all. It just felt… natural. Nothing like trying to control all that water.’

                ‘So maybe we were right,’ Kouichi mused, ‘in that those spirits we got initially were our weaknesses, and the ones you and Junpei have now are your strengths. You two must have overcome or understood something, to call them to you.’

                ‘Like unlocking a new level,’ Takuya agreed. ‘Yeah, probably, though I don’t think I had any major clicking moments, you know.’

                ‘I might have,’ Junpei said, after a moment’s pause. ‘I was thinking about how hard it was to carry around that hammer, and how I was pretty much smashing anything at first… though I guess it didn’t matter initially, what with needing to smash a whole body of water and all. But then I broke the locks on those cages and that didn’t take just power. That took precision. And, on top of that, Tomoki and I were probably the only ones who could have done anything with those locks, and Tomoki would’ve had to meld them through and that would’ve taken longer.’

                ‘So you felt like you finally had your spirit under control,’ Izumi concluded. ‘I get you. It still feels like walked on skittles to me. Kouichi?’

                ‘Still too bright,’ he agreed.

‘But what about Tomoki then?’ Junpei asked. ‘Unless the spirit can be transferred between Takuya and Tomoki, he’s lost his chance.’

Tomoki’s expression dropped.

                ‘I doubt it’s like that,’ Takuya comforted. ‘Otherwise, there would’ve been only five of us in total. There’s still Kouji, so at least one of us had to have a spirit that belonged to someone else. Besides, it was a mental thing, right? Maybe you don’t actually physically need the spirit to do that. It had the effect of whacking us over the head instead.’

Izumi laughed. ‘Maybe. That’s one way of putting it, anyway. But that means that, when Tomoki figures it out, he’ll have had the toughest battle of all of us because he lost the cheat sheet.’

When, she said. Not if.

Tomoki beamed.

So did Takuya. _Now, hopefully that’s all actually true._ ‘Now, about Gigasmon… Bokomon, did you find anything yet?’

Bokomon was still pouring over his book.

                ‘Not a thing,’ he moaned. ‘Why oh – Neemon, what are you doing?!’

Neemon was shaking the book as though something would fly out, much to Bokomon’s horror.

To their surprise though, when Bokomon moved to snatch his precious book back, something did flutter out.

                ‘The page was folded in,’ Bokomon blinked. ‘I wonder why.’

But that folded page meant there was more to the book than any of them had previously been aware of.

.

The book told of ten other spirits. Beast spirits, they were called. Focused on power, while the human spirits focused on manoeuvrability. They’d guessed the latter part, but the former meant there should be a spirit for each of them.

They hadn’t caught even a whiff of those spirits before Gigasmon.

                ‘So we’ve got a long way to go,’ Takuya sighed. ‘Whoever designed this game sure likes to force the level-grinding.’

Kouichi frowned. The others looked rather worn down, too, but they weren’t explicitly frowning. It was Bokomon who spoke up, though. ‘Our world is just as real as yours. And that goes for the digimon.’

                ‘Of course.’ The others stared in surprise, at how easily Takuya said that. ‘Of course,’ he repeated. ‘I mean, you’re our friends. That makes you real, right?’

                ‘Well, we could go into the whole discussion about imaginary friends…’ Junpei muttered under his breath. ‘But real is relative, anyway. What matters is what we think, and what you think. If you think this is all real and, frankly, this place is too complicated to be a figment of our imaginations or probably anything our world could come up with with their technology… I mean, virtual reality’s still in its infancy. No way they could pull this off, unless we want to add something like time travelling to the mix.’

                ‘It’s either that or dimension travelling,’ Izumi pointed out. ‘Or both.’

                ‘That’s getting complicated.’ Now it was Takuya’s turn to frown. ‘Isn’t there a simpler explanation.’

                ‘We could try replying to the lady who sends us all those texts,’ Kouichi suggested.

They did try that, after face-palming at the fact that none of them had thought to do that before.

There was no reply, though.

Which led them back to the previous issue. ‘This world’s real enough,’ Kouichi summarised, in the end. ‘That’s what matters, really. We be just as careful as we would if everyone around us has only one life, because there may not be another chance.’ He paused, then added. ‘Which is probably just as well. Recklessness can be dangerous in a context we still don’t know enough about.’

                ‘And then there’s Grumblemon and Ranamon running loose,’ Izumi sighed. ‘Every time we think we’ve gotten somewhere, we wind up with even more questions. And what’s next, anyway?’

                ‘Maybe retrace our steps?’ Tomoki suggested. ‘I mean, we passed the wind spirit and the ice spirit, so maybe we’re at the point where we can use them after all, but we’re just physically too far away.’

                ‘But – ‘ Kouichi began, before cutting himself off.

                ‘Kouji, right.’ Takuya stared at Kouichi.

‘But the Dark Continent is in the other direction,’ Junpei pointed out. ‘We’d be leaving Tomoki without a means to fight for that long. Not that going the other way will guarantee anything.’

‘Why not go both ways?’ Neemon asked.

‘Theoretically impossible,’ Bokomon snapped. ‘Unless… you split up.’

The five humans exchanged glances. ‘Split up,’ Takuya repeated. ‘Well, Tomoki and Izumi have to go towards Flame Terminal. Kouichi has to go towards Dark Continent. So how about I go with Izumi and Tomoki, just in case we can switch spirits around, and Junpei goes with Kouichi.’

                ‘We didn’t even agree to split up yet,’ Izumi replied. ‘Do we really need to? And is it even a good idea? If Ranamon and Grumblemon team up, and we’ve halved our fighting forces…’

                ‘I don’t think that’s the case,’ Kouichi said thoughtfully. ‘That first fight with Grumblemon… I was an easy target, but he ignored me completely in favour of Junpei.’

                ‘That’s true,’ Junpei said in surprise. ‘And then he showed up here.’

                ‘And Ranamon followed me,’ Takuya added. ‘Huh. Maybe they just follow whoever the original spirit holder was. So when they’ve licked their wounds, they’ll – crap, they’ll come right back here!’

And that would be a poor display of hospitality if they brought a battle to their doors again.

                ‘In that case, we stand a better chance beating them if we separate them,’ Takuya mused. ‘I think, anyway. Bad guys working together could be problematic, and we all know we can work together. And Tomoki really does need a spirit. And someone should go get Kouji, so he’s not all on his own, and it’s not really fair to either of them if we delay one or the other.’

                ‘We were on our way to the Dark Continent anyway,’ Tomoki said quietly. ‘May we should just…’

                ‘No, Takuya’s right,’ Junpei interrupted. ‘It’s not fair on you if we do that. You guys know the way, so Bokomon should come with Kouichi and I. Neemon?’

                ‘Umm…’ Neemon replied, staring between them. ‘I have to choose?’ He mumbled to himself for a while, then decided. ‘I’ll go with Bokomon. Who’ll look after me otherwise?’

They laughed, though it was strained with their imminent parting.

It’d be okay, though. They’d come back stronger and better equipped. Hopefully.


	26. Soggy Forests (Izumi)

It felt oddly quiet without the company of Bokomon and Neemon (since Kouichi was quiet as it was and Takuya more than made up for conversation). It was relaxing either way, though. The sun peeked through the forest canopy and Takuya and Tomoki told tales of their brothers.

It made Izumi a little wistful, but she supposed she had two little brothers at the present time to do the trick.

                ‘Ooh,’ she said, stopping the pair. ‘Meat apples!’

And so they settled down and made a quick camp to roast those meat apples.

The conversation kept up. Izumi confirmed she had no siblings of her own, but told of her cousins in Italy. Tomoki told of how he managed to beat his brother at every game they played, but seemed to fail at the life lessons. ‘I think I get it now, though,’ he said proudly. ‘Or a little better, at least.’

                ‘Good on you.’ Takuya clapped him on his back. ‘My brother and I usually wind up fighting before we manage to play any games together.’ He launched into another story, how it had been cloudy one day and they’d argued about who got to use the controller and Shinya had roped their mother onto his side.

                ‘He came running after me with an umbrella when it started to rain,’ Takuya said affectionately. ‘He can be a brat at times, but he cares.’

                ‘Lucky,’ Izumi said. ‘It rains more often here than where I used to live, so I keep on leaving my umbrella at home and then having to call my parents to pick me up from school.’

                ‘Nobody shares their umbrella?’ Takuya asked. ‘That sucks.’

Izumi frowned. ‘Well, I wouldn’t say my classmates like me very much. Because I’m a foreigner, and I don’t like the same things they do and don’t try to pretend I do… Not that it sounds like trying to fit in works any better, looking at Junpei.’

                ‘It’s weird.’ Takuya leaned back to stare through the forest canopy. It was starting to get dark, now. The sky was alit with colour. ‘It’s like a seesaw. You need to find the right balance, I guess, but shouldn’t that sort of thing come naturally?’

                ‘Ni-san says you need to be able to pick up social cues and then compromise enough so that you don’t lose your own self in doing it,’ Tomoki offered. ‘I mean, he’s always saying complicated stuff like that and I never really got it, but I guess he meant you need to give them a little, but not too much?’

                ‘So I don’t give enough and Junpei gives too much.’ Izumi pondered that. ‘Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But there’s no changing Japan’s attitude to foreigners.’

                ‘Why?’ Takuya asked. ‘We’re fine.’

She smiled. ‘Guess we are. Maybe I’m projecting a little.’ She remembered that girl, at camp. She’d offered a hand and then pulled away, and that had hurt more than just being ignored or belittled. But… ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at her. Maybe we could have found some middle-ground where her friends wouldn’t interfere.’

                ‘Huh?’ Takuya and Tomoki gave her blank looks.

She explained what had happened at camp as the coloured sky grew dull and dark.

And then they felt the first drops of rain on their hands. They all wore hats, so at least their heads were dry at first, but drops rolled off their meat apples. And then their clothes were soaked and their skin and the fire went out, and the forest’s trees weren’t thick enough to filter out all the rain.

                ‘Where’s the village?’ Takuya shouted as they bolted. ‘There was a village around here, wasn’t there?’

                ‘Their huts are made out of twigs, though,’ Izumi pointed out. ‘That’s hardly going to help.’

And the ground was getting slippery, making it harder to run.

                ‘Is it just me,’ said Tomoki, ‘or is the rain getting heavier?’

                ‘Of course it is, sugar,’ a new voice giggled. ‘Got to douse that fire-stick, don’t I?’

They spun around. Tomoki slid with a cry and Izumi just managed to catch him. Still, neither of them could make out the speaker: that unfamiliar voice teasing and threatening from the trees.

Takuya found them, eventually. ‘Ranamon.’

                ‘Right you are, sugar.’

                ‘Sugar?’ Izumi repeated, then shook her head. Why should she care how the digimon spoke? What mattered was who it was. Ranamon, who Takuya had once become. But now he had his fire spirits.

                ‘What’s the deal?’ Takuya asked, apparently wondering the same thing. ‘We were getting along just fine before? What gives?’

The water nymph answered with a jet of steaming water that Takuya dove into a puddle to avoid. That left him mud-splattered and disgruntled and shivering – and Izumi and Tomoki honestly weren’t that better off.

                ‘Fine, fine. I’ll fight if you want a fight that badly.’ And Takuya pulled out his D-scanner and transformed.

Izumi and Tomoki inched away from the battlefield.

But it was more of a one-sided battle, to be honest. Takuya wasn’t exactly a slouch, but Ranamon was faster, and the rain made all of Agunimon’s fire darts sizzle out before they even got close. And when Takuya tried something stronger, she’d giggle and dodge out of the way and then retaliate with a burst of water that had the fire warrior hissing in pain.

At least with the rain, there was no danger in the forest accidentally catching fire.

Izumi grabbed that thought. That also meant there was no chance she’d catch fire, either, if she evolved and joined in the fight. And Takuya was struggling on his own, was at too much of a disadvantage…

                ‘Go,’ said Tomoki, tugging at her sleeve. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll scream really loud if something happens.’

That’s right. Tomoki had no spirit at all right then. But that was a bravery in and of itself. ‘You’re growing up, kid,’ she grinned at him.

He beamed back, and that smile saw her off.

                ‘Takuya!’ she yelled as she slid her way through the puddles and the mud. Her arms grabbed the trees to balance herself – and that actually worked pretty well, she reflected. Still, she’d probably be more useful if she could grab Ranamon instead of the trees.

Except Ranamon was so darn _slippery_ , as Izumi discovered when she finally got a hold, only for the water nymph to slide right out.

Still, Takuya suddenly whooped so hopefully that meant he’d gotten a hit in.

                ‘You alright?’ Agunimon asked, using Arbormon’s shoulder to support himself temporarily. ‘Uurgh, this is worse than playing soccer in the rain. My attacks are all useless.’

                ‘Then how about you grab Ranamon, and I plummet her?’ Izumi suggested. Not that she typically went around punching people, but couldn’t go too badly, right?

It did, when Ranamon decided to swell to four times her size and grow an extra few… appendages.

                ‘What the heck?’ Takuya spluttered, waving his arms where they presumably stung.

                ‘Another beast spirit, I guess,’ Izumi frowned. That was hardly fair. They didn’t have beast spirits. Half of them didn’t even have the spirits that fit them best (which might be a good thing, if that meant they’d be fighting against Arbormon and Wolfmon on top of the other two) and Tomoki didn’t have any spirits at all, for the moment.

And if they were having such a hard time with the human spirit, what were they supposed to do about the beast spirit?

Hide behind trees when it started to spit ink everywhere, apparently. Acid ink, because where it hits the tree steams and there are dark patches left behind, alit by Agunimon’s constant – though currently watered down – flames. Flames struggled against water. And Arbormon was even more off-balance than usual and waterlogged on top of that.

What she wouldn’t give to be flying instead…

But the Spirits of Wind didn’t magically appear as though heeding her call. They had to be near the village, and the hollow tree in which they slumbered. So it was something else. Maybe she just wasn’t ready yet. Or maybe they’d run in the other direction by mistake.

No… She wasn’t ready yet. She didn’t feel ready. Walking around with Arbormon’s legs still made her fell unsteady and she still _was_ unsteady. Maybe it was a matter of practicing with those loose joints and stiff bones. Or maybe it was getting used to moving the way she wanted to.

She wasn’t a dancer, but maybe it was something like that, like dancing.

Not that the rain and the puddles and the mud and running dirt were really helping matters.

Maybe she could try that now, though. Agunimon was scurrying around gracelessly too. ‘Do you know how to dance, by any chance?’

                ‘Dance?’ Takuya snorted. ‘The fancy ballroom stuff? No way. But we’ve messed around with the radio.’

Maybe it was worth a shot.

                ‘Try it again?’

                ‘To what music?’

But did they really need music? They had the rain, and Ranamon – or whatever Ranamon had become – tapping out the beat. She wobbled as she dodged: dodged left, then right, then left again. Yes, there was a rhythm there, and if she listened hard enough, there was a song as well. The pattering of rain. If she could get into the rhythm, maybe she could catch the slippery water spirit, whose larger body didn’t seem to have slowed her down at all.

There! Finally, she felt the satisfying smack of fist against flesh. And again. No kicks for now, though. She didn’t there. And then she heard a screech which was presumably Takuya doing something. Was he kicking or punching too, or was he using his flame attacks for something?

She opened her eyes. When had she closed them, anyway? Maybe because it was easier to hear the music and dance to it when she wasn’t distracted with what she could see in front of her: a slippery ground and trees all round that all created an obstacle to trip her up.

And maybe it was a good thing she had closed her eyes, because opening them actually wasn’t that useful. There was mist everywhere.

Huh, she thought. Must be Takuya’s handiwork. And since she’d been working just fine with her eyes closed and getting hits onto the water spirit, an effective one.

The digimon shrieked and spat more ink. Izumi closed her eyes again, and dodged. Something hissed. The digimon shrieked again.

And then she was gone and the rain slowly let up.

Izumi opened her eyes again. The trees that were hit the most were groaning but none of them had fallen, surprisingly. Tomoki came out from behind one, wringing his hat. Agunimon shook himself like a furred animal and Izumi wished that would be as effective with her but it felt like the water had seeped into her very bones.

                ‘Guess we won,’ Takuya said tiredly.

                ‘Dunno about that,’ Izumi sighed. ‘It’s not like we could punch a massive squid – or whatever that thing is – unconscious. Way too squishy.’

                ‘At least neither of you got hit with that ink,’ Tomoki fussed. ‘That stuff ate through the trees!’

It was a bit of an exaggeration, but it would’ve been nasty on skin. Still, they were all soaked, and Agunimon had wandered away from the pair of them, trying to light some sodden wood and create a fire.

In the end, he sighed, defeated, and devolved back into his human state. ‘I guess we’re better off getting to the village. Indoors is dry, hopefully.’

                ‘And if Ranamon was following us and causing the rain, then that means they mightn’t have gotten any,’ Izumi agreed.

And they set off in what was hopefully the right direction, stomachs only half-full since they’d abandoned their dinner to the rain as well.

.

Breezy Village was in the direction they’d gone, thankfully. And Izumi was right: it was rain-free. The Floramon was as welcoming as they’d been the first time they’d passed them, and warm soup (despite how it was made, and they were far more amiable to the eccentrics of the Digital World by then) was just what they needed to settle their stomachs and warm their souls.

They checked out the hollow tree while they were there, but the spirit of wind still slumbered. It looked brighter though, or maybe that was just her hoping for it, hoping for a sign.

Still, she had a feeling she was on the right track. She had to know herself better, body and soul, and dance to the music of the world before she could control the wind spirits. And that was exactly what she was working towards.

And having a digimon spirit which was like walking on skittles was a good way to get better at that. And so was hanging out with her new friends.

Maybe that was the whole point. Maybe the world brought the five – or six, once they met Minamoto Kouji – of them together for that very reason: so they could learn from each other, and grow.


	27. Castle in the Trees (Junpei)

The boys were both breathing hard by the time they arrived at Forest Terminal with the digimon on their backs, from climbing those steep tracks and because it had gotten too difficult for Bokomon and Neemon to reasonably manage. ‘I really wish that Trailmon had given us a lift instead of speeding right by,’ Junpei grumbled. His feet wished that as well, though his sneakers were holding up surprisingly well under it all.

Kouichi didn’t bother gracing that with a reply. They’d both grumbled enough when the Trailmon actually had sped past and there was no use grumbling more about it now that they were where they were meant to be. Kind of.

They were somewhere definable, at least, which was progress. They’d escaped from nameless forest territory for the time being.

So Kouichi set Neemon down and plopped himself onto one of the station benches. ‘Let’s just sleep here tonight… unless it rains.’

There were some clouds, but they looked pretty far away and only getting further. ‘Looks more like the direction the others went in,’ Junpei mused, claiming the other bench with Bokomon. ‘We should be safe from the rain.’

They were safe from the rain, but they awoke to a dark sky and a shaking platform.

Junpei blinked blearily as Bokomon fell with a thump. ‘What’s going on?’ he slurred, voice heavy with sleep.

Kouichi sat up and stared hard at the darkness. ‘Gigasmon,’ he muttered, before shaking Neemon who somehow had managed to sleep through the commotion. ‘Come on Neemon, you’ll be a sitting duck!’

                ‘We’re having duck?’ Neemon asked, still half-asleep and rather muddled.

                ‘If you can find some.’ It wasn’t like they’d had dinner. ‘But stay out of Gigasmon’s way.’

                ‘Eep,’ said Neemon, though it really was too dark for the rest of them to see. He wound up tripping over Bokomon instead, before the light of evolution managed to make things a little clearer.

But that light didn’t stay away for long. Wolfmon drew his saber and that helped some more – or didn’t.

Junpei figured that was as balanced as they were going to get, though, and it wasn’t like Wolfmon had an attack that wasn’t somehow light-based anyway. That was a disadvantage Kouichi simply had to deal with – but there was just enough visibility that he thought he could fight pretty well as well.

And Gigasmon would be equally hindered… or moreso because lightning created light, too. He’d just have to be careful not to hit Kouichi or his line of vision – but at least they’d fought Snimon together… kind of.

This time they were actually fighting together. And that began with launching off the platform to meet Gigasmon’s fists. Wolfmon immediately threw his weight and parried, leaving Junpei to sneak around and attack.

Which made perfect sense since Blitzmon didn’t come with a weapon attached. But a beam sword wasn’t made to counter brute strength so Kouichi had to break parry quickly and duck away.

Still, they managed to dance around each other easily enough, and Gigasmon wasn’t exactly built for speed. The trouble was causing any damage, since both their moves were turning out to be rather ineffective. And they’d tire far too quickly. Who knew what Gigasmon’s stamina was like?

And Kouichi might have an advantage in the dark, but not really with a spirit that lit up that darkness. It wasn’t worth staying on to fight. The cover of darkness also afforded them the opportunity to slip into the trees and hide – even if it meant they’d have to spend the rest of the night in the trees or on uneven ground.

Junpei took to the air with the digimon and Wolfmon tucked his saber away and shot into the trees. Gigasmon, to both their surprise, simply stood and shook his fists at the retreating thunder warrior – even if he could have easily gone after the warrior of light instead.

They reconvened at a fork in the road where the canopy opened up. ‘I’m not sure how I feel about being ignored,’ Kouichi admitted. ‘But at least we got away.’

                ‘Well,’ Junpei laughed, ‘I’m just glad he doesn’t have wings.’

                ‘Agreed,’ Bokomon nodded. ‘You two are at major disadvantages with no beast spirits and without an element strong against earth.’

                ‘Water or ice, I guess,’ Kouichi sighed. ‘In any case, it doesn’t seem too hard to outrun him. The issue is avoiding him – especially long enough to get a decent night’s sleep.’

                ‘Definitely the good night’s sleep,’ Junpei agreed. ‘Otherwise we’ll be seeing shadows long before we reach the Dark Continent.’

Nobody responded.

                ‘That was a good one, wasn’t – ‘ Kouichi’s hand slapped over his mouth suddenly.

Junpei grabbed the wrist and yanked it off. ‘What the hell?’ he hissed.

Kouichi wasn’t even looking at him, but rather –

 _Okay,_ Junpei thought. _Where did that green dude come from?_

                ‘At ease, children,’ said the stranger. ‘I am Shurimon, and Lord Seraphimon has sent me to guide you to his castle.’

                ‘Lord Seraphimon?’ they echoed.

Bokomon, on the other hand, squeaked. ‘Lord Seraphimon is one of the rulers of the Digital World – one of the Three Great Angels. He resides over law and order and the Forest Kingdom and oh it’s such an honour –‘ He looked positively delighted, and it did rather suit the white gnome.

Junpei couldn’t help bit grin, and when he snuck another peak at Kouichi, he was smiling a little as well. But his eyes were contemplative. ‘Maybe he can explain things to us.’

                ‘Hope so,’ Junpei agreed. They could use a few bones of advice… and some answers while they were at it. The mystery women sending them messages was kind of helpful – but she was also the one who’d landed them in this mess to begin with.

And so they followed Shurimon, down a road in the fork, then up a winding road of stairs, past a guard Shurimon introduced as Sorcerimon (though he looked rather like a differenty-coloured Wizarmon) and then finally through two sets of double-doors and into a chamber where there is only an eight-winged angel upon the altar.

                ‘Welcome, children.’ His voice is stern – not harsh – and very worn. ‘I am Seraphimon.’

The boys look at each other, not entirely sure what to do. They bow in greeting, in the end, instead, because that was their custom and, really, the only custom they know.

It seemed to do the trick, at least. Shurimon dragged some chairs in for the four of them, and then disappeared. ‘You have a rather persistent shadow,’ he remarked.

                ‘Seriously?’ Junpei groaned – before paling. ‘We didn’t lead him to your doorstep, did we?’

                ‘It was I who invited you,’ dismissed the angel. ‘And my soldiers are more than capable of stalling a rogue warrior.’

                ‘Just stalling?’ And, this time, Junpei found himself flushing at the poor choice of words. ‘I mean –‘ _Great job, Junpei. Open mouth and insert foot._

It was somehow much easier to do with someone like Kouichi who just didn’t go around interrupting people, generally, and talked about just as much as was necessary.

                ‘No, it’s a valid point,’ Kouichi frowned. _Huh, he’s defending the slip of tongue._ ‘One of the rulers of the digital world and his army can’t defeat Gigasmon. So what can?’

                ‘A Legendary Warrior,’ Seraphimon replied. ‘Legend states that one can only be destroyed by another. It is their failsafe… but also their downfall.’

                ‘Because it doesn’t work if they’re not all working together,’ Junpei sighed, ‘so we really need to work out how to beat them. Some tips would be helpful.’

                ‘There is a hierarchy,’ Seraphimon explained. ‘There are human spirits… let me take Wolfmon as an example. Then beast spirits are somewhat stronger. For the spirits of light, that would be Garrumon. Then stronger still is the double-spirit evolution, which combines the human and beast spirits to create Beowolfmon. Then Unified which combines ten of the twenty spirits into MagnaGarurumon. Then, finally, the unification of all twenty spirits creates Susanoomon.’

                ‘Susanoomon,’ Kouichi repeated, ‘after the war god Susanoo?’

Junpei blinked. Maybe he should amend his previous thought. He hadn’t taken Kouichi to be interested in history, though. Or mythology. Whichever had led to that little tidbit of information.

                ‘I confess myself to be unfamiliar with human literature,’ Seraphimon replied, ‘though Ofanimon may know. She owns a magnificent library. Or Cherubimon. He resides over all knowledge in this world.’

                ‘…aren’t we getting a little off topic?’ Junpei wondered aloud… though he was surprised he wasn’t saying that to Takuya instead, or Izumi wasn’t saying it to him.

                ‘You’re right. Forgive me.’ Seraphimon bowed his head.

                ‘Sorry,’ Kouichi, likewise, mumbled, shuffling his feet.

They both looked so awkward that it was all Junpei could do to keep himself from bursting into laughter. So he just moved on. ‘Okay, so only legendary warriors can defeat other legendary warriors, but because none of us have beast spirits – or even the right _human_ spirits – we’re at a huge disadvantage?’

                ‘Though it may be more prudent to deal with the rogue spirits already on the loose before adding to their numbers, though,’ Bokomon mused. ‘Dealing with just two is tricky enough, even if we outnumber them two to one.’

                ‘The match-ups are terrible, though,’ Junpei sighed. ‘If it was Ranamon stalking us instead, I could deal with her easily. And if Takuya still had the water spirits, he could’ve dealt with Grumblemon.’

                ‘Is it that easy though?’ Kouichi wondered, ‘with the beast spirit?’

                ‘In truth,’ Seraphimon interjects, ‘Grumblemon found that beast spirit on the mountain. Likewise, Ranamon found hers in the river by the school. There was the smallest window of opportunity with both of them –‘

                ‘…which we really couldn’t capitalise on because we didn’t have a clue what was happening,’ Junpei muttered. ‘Still kind of don’t.’ Then his words caught up with him again and he winced. Geeze, Seraphimon probably thought of him as terribly rude.

But still, can’t blame a guy for being frustrated.

                ‘I’m afraid we don’t, either,’ said Seraphimon apologetically. ‘This hasn’t… well…’ he checked himself, ‘there is nothing in the legends or prophecies. Likewise, we can’t say if Agunimon was an exception or if something similar will happen with Wolfmon and the spirits of darkness.’

                ‘The spirits of darkness?’ Kouichi repeated. ‘You mean they’re with Kouji at the moment?’

The great angel nodded.

Bokomon, however, frowned. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘The human spirit of darkness is supposed to be Lowemon.’

                ‘That is true,’ Seraphimon agreed, ‘however the spirits of darkness were corrupted long ago by Lucemon. It was his final stand, if you will. Some think of it as his petty final strike, accomplishing nothing.’

                ‘But you said “corrupted”,’ Junpei frowned, when Kouichi didn’t comment further. ‘That doesn’t sound like nothing.’

                ‘No, it’s not.’ Seraphimon closed his eyes. ‘Like how you children were able to use spirits aside from the one you are most attuned to, some digimon are also capable of evolving with those spirits.’

                ‘And yet we weren’t able to use them all,’ Junpei pointed out. ‘We passed the spirits of wind and ice on the way, but those ones didn’t react.’

                ‘The spirits are sealed,’ Kouichi stated, before Seraphimon could reply.

The great angel coughed. ‘Yes, Ofanimon sealed the spirits that way. She felt that, if given the chance to battle with spirits least suited to you, you would grow stronger… and strong enough.’

                ‘In other words, you guys have been leading us along so we can level up enough for the big boss.’ Junpei couldn’t say he was very happy about that, and Kouichi didn’t look very happy either, but it made enough sense. They had, after all, agreed to play a game and at least they weren’t just thrown into the deep end and expected to save the world.

Still, it would’ve been nice to have known what he was agreeing to before he agreed to it. But that was also on him, agreeing without thinking first.

                ‘We just want you all to be as safe as possible, and have the highest chance of success.’ The angel looked inexplicably sad.

They wanted to ask… but they also didn’t. If other people had attempted this and failed, they should have been told before they even tried themselves. But knowing now… Knowing now was pointless. It was just more baggage; baggage they could do without.

                ‘We have kept watch,’ Seraphimon continued. ‘Minamoto Kouji is at Cherubimon’s castle in the Dark Continent. Your other friends are nearing Breezy Village where the wind spirit slumbers. We have allies everywhere. After all, most of us want to see our world saved.’

                ‘Well, that’s nice to know,’ Junpei sighed. Though it didn’t really help against the rogue spirits, apparently.

Seraphimon nodded. ‘Is there anything else you would like to know?’

                ‘Is Kouji okay?’ Kouichi asked, after a moment’s silence.

Seraphimon shrugged delicately. ‘For now, yes. But a corrupt spirit is far harder on the mind than it is on the body.’

Kouichi chewed at his lip. He didn’t look particularly comforted, but… well, he’d asked. Sucks that one of the ten spirits were corrupted though, and it was one they wound up needing. Couldn’t it have been the spirit of metal or something? That one hadn’t turned out at all yet, and didn’t sound like any of them really needed to claim it either.

Sorcermon suddenly burst in. ‘The earth spirit approaches!’ he cried.

Seraphimon stood, tall and casting a shadow over the entire room. ‘Then you must go now. Over the mountain and to the Dark Continent.’ He looked at Kouichi a moment. ‘You are the only one who can purify those spirits. That’s the battle you face ahead… but in doing so, you’ll gain something more than a greater appreciation of yourself and greater strength.’

                ‘My brother, right?’ Kouichi said rhetorically.

                ‘… go how?’ Neemon asked, when nobody said anything after.

                ‘There is a Trailmon waiting,’ said Seraphimon. ‘Sorcermon will take you.’

And Sorcermon did take them, to a cute little yellow one called Kettle. And he sped off, tires screeching.

Kouichi and Junpei just stared out their respective windows, processing what they’d learnt. There wasn’t really much to see, with the outside being so dark, but Kettle had lights strung all over and inside the carriages too. They had better conditions, really, despite it being later at night. And the seats were far more comfortable.

They just weren’t sleepy, though. Their minds were too full.

                ‘Don’t know if I like being watched and yet left to my own devices,’ Junpei mused. ‘I mean, I’m not that religious and I kinda do think there’s are gods out there… but they’re not the sort we’re supposed to see and hear, you know.  They give abstract signs and stuff, and a lot of it is just believing or no. But that Seraphimon… he’s more a king than a god.’

                ‘And we’re humans, not digimon,’ Kouichi agreed. ‘I don’t like it either, but we’re here now and we have to manage it.’ He paused, then added. ‘I don’t know what’s worse: the corrupt spirit, or the fact that others have gone through this before us.’

It was more obvious to Junpei, since Kouji wasn’t his twin brother. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to say that out loud. He had enough tact.

                ‘We can’t worry about any of that now, though,’ he pointed out. ‘We’re just in it too deep.’

                ‘Yeah…’ Kouichi sighed. ‘But whoever set this up from the real world… Well, it can’t be legal, right?’

                ‘Assuming someone did set it up in the real world…’ They trailed off at that. Why their world? Why them? Why did they stand a chance of succeeding when others had failed. Or had they misunderstood? Was it the digimon who’d tried and failed and so they’d turned to the human world instead? That was easier to stomach, and made perfect sense. After all, why involve another world in internal world troubles, even if that did mean the end of the world, if they had the resources to deal with it themselves?

                ‘He seemed pretty confident whatever he and the other angels are planning will work, even with the blind spot of the rogue spirits,’ Kouichi spoke up suddenly. ‘I wish I’d thought of more questions to ask him, but… well…’

Junpei shrugged. ‘At least you managed one. I was still processing all of that!’

                ‘It was a selfish one,’ Kouichi muttered. And Junpei supposed it kind of was. Important, yes, but selfish. They could have asked about the others too.

                ‘But that’s okay, isn’t it? Kouji is the one we know next to nothing about, at the moment.’ Processing that, Junpei realised how right that statement was. ‘Actually, what can you tell us about him?’

                ‘Well…’ Kouichi turned to the window again. ‘I don’t know him personally, of course, but he lives with our father and stepmother. And dog. And plays a guitar.’

                ‘Cool,’ said Junpei. ‘I mean, I’m not a dog person but playing an instrument is cool. That takes dedication.’

                ‘That’s true.’ Kouichi smiled a bit. ‘And I’m more of a cat person myself. The – ‘ He stopped suddenly, eyes whipping as they caught sight of something.

Junpei had a good guess of what when there was a thud, jerk, and then the train wheels screeching. ‘Gigasmon grabbed the train, didn’t he?’

                ‘Well, more like Grumblemon jumped onto the train but same thing, I guess.’

They listened to the sound of things being smashed. Grumblemon was crushing the carriages looking for them. _Great._

They evolved and lunged at Grumblemon the moment he entered their carriage. The result was the three of them tumbling onto the tracks and the Trailmon speeding away with Bokomon and Neemon.

 _Well,_ Junpei thought, a little guiltily. _At least they’ll be safe._

They’d chosen a pretty poor place to fight, in the end. On the tracks where another Trailmon could easily come, on a mountain where they could easily slip off and was Grumblemon’s domain.

But it wasn’t like they chose the place. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and all.

But they were no better off than the last time. In fact, with the steep drop and lack of wings, Wolfmon was worse off.

Which was probably why it was inevitable that he slipped, especially with Grumblemon’s hammer causing the mountain to shake every time he swung it down.

                ‘Kouichi!’ Junpei screamed, diving – before the hammer caught him round the middle and he was thrown up instead. He frantically tried to righted himself – then dodge the boulders coming for him…

And in the end, the mountain path was broken and blocked and he didn’t even know if Kouichi had gone left or down.

Hopefully left. And left enough to avoid those boulders.

He’d at least managed to give Grumblemon the slip for a little bit. And Grumbelmon wasn’t attacking anymore, so Kouichi really was better off. Hopefully.

It would help if they had their phones.

 _Hang on…_ He’d contacted the others before, through the devices. Maybe he could do it again.

Except Kouichi wasn’t responding. _Darn it. You better be alright!_

Because it was his fault for not catching the other if he wasn’t. Because he couldn’t in good conscience blame whatever god existed in the digital world for not giving Wolfmon wings. Not when he’d been that close and hadn’t grabbed him.

He kept trying, holed up in the nice little hole he’d found that’d, hopefully, keep him away from Grumblemon for just a bit. But he’d be screwed if Grumblemon did catch him.

Or he could just fly up, because it wasn’t like Grumblemon could fly either.


End file.
